On March 30, 1907, Stanford
University and the San Diego Rowing Club competed in a pair of four-oared
shells on Alamitos Bay in Long Beach. It was the first rowing event in
Long Beach, and the first four-oared race on the Pacific coast. During
the roaring 20's a group of local developers known as the Channel Club had
the low-lying tidelands of the Alamitos Bay dredged of more than seven
million cubic yards of sand, silt and mud to create a recreational boating
lagoon. Soon thereafter, the lagoon caught the eye of the Los Angeles
Local Organizing Committee for the Xth Olympic Games as an ideal site for
the rowing events, so the Marine Stadium was born. The US men's 8+
represented by the University of California-Berkeley men won the Xth
Olympiad that year defeating Italy, Canada and Great Britain before an
awesome crowd of 121,000 spectators. The race was so close there was
never any open water between any of the boats, and the U.S. crew won by a
mere three feet. The stadium is the only rowing venue specifically built
for the sport in the United States and it was named a California State
Landmark in 1995 since it and the Coliseum are the only two surviving 1932
Olympic structures.
Four with
surging past the original stadium seats and finish line from the 1932
Olympics. Photo taken ca. 1934.
Upon the heels of the
Olympic Games, the original Long Beach Rowing Club (later the Long Beach
Rowing Association) was formed by twenty five Long Beach businessmen
dedicated to promoting rowing in the Los Angeles-Long Beach area. Clyde
Doyle, Chair of the City Recreation Committee was the club's first
temporary president, and Keith Enloe was elected as the first official
president. The club purchased several of the shells left by the Japanese
and German Olympic crews. Long Beach High School, Wilson High School,
Long Beach Junior College and UCLA all immediately embarked on rowing
programs. All the high school crews were coached by
Pete Archer (1904-2001) through the Long Beach Recreation Commission,
which of course put Pete in the comfortable position of never being the
losing coach. Omnipresent and tireless, Pete also coached the
recreational classes for men and women. Throughout the thirties, Pete's
Jr. rowers became national champions and many went on to row with the
great California crews of that era.
Photo of members
of the original Long Beach Rowing Club ca 1934
The young Rowing
Association sponsored and promoted large and glamorous National
Championship regattas producing the Pacific Coast single scull champion
Rolla ("Rollie") G. Carroll (click
here for photo gallery & history) in 1935, and in 1936 LBRA sent the double scull combo of
Jack Gallagher and Jim Magee to the Olympic trials. However, the Great
Depression put an end to the gala events and rowing settled back to its
community roots until the national commitment to winning Word War II
brought a temporary end to rowing in Long Beach.
After the war, several
attempts to revive rowing in Long Beach failed to materialize in the face
of changing priorities and the city's use of the boathouse for storage.
USC used part of the Olympic boathouse for a year before moving to the Los
Angeles Harbor, so it wasn't until 1956 when the U.S. Olympic Rowing Team
trained in the stadium that Long Beach State College (now CSU-Long Beach)
and the reborn LBRA began to ply the waters of the Marine Stadium once
again. To this day members from both the club and the university row the
same water as their ancestors. In 1967, then club member and CSU-Long
Beach crew coach Bill Lockyer founded the long-standing Christmas Regatta,
a late-season sprint regatta which carries his name and his legacy forward
to this day.
The City of Long Beach
modernized the stadium for the 1968 Olympic Rowing and Canoeing Trials,
and the current boathouse was constructed near the 800 meter mark of the
course. LBRA dedicated the boathouse to Pete Archer in honor of his
legendary contributions to the sport of rowing in Long Beach and southern
California. The far end of the the original Olympic course was filled in
at about this time in preparation for an ill-conceived and ill-fated
Pacific Coast Freeway project. Unfortunately the old Olympic boathouse
was left high and dry and now serves as the center for the Long Beach
Conservation Corps. Thankfully the freeway was never built, and instead a
Park and the Colorado Lagoon were created in its place. Despite the
relocation and new finish line, the stadium still provides 2000 meters of
straight water (the standard sprint distance for national and
international rowing), and with the Cerritos channel and the water
surrounding Naples Island we are blessed with unlimited sheltered water.
LBRA wasted no time in once
again producing champions. Long Beach local John Van Blom won the
singles trial that year just clipping his fellow local Tom McKibbon by .4
seconds. John Nunn, another LBRA rower, and his double's partner Bill
Maher of the Detroit Boat Club also qualified and won a bronze medal at
the Olympics in Mexico City that same year. By 1972 the club had produced
another Olympic double in John Van Blom and Tom McKibbon who struck gold,
and in 1976 a total of fourteen U. S. Olympic rowers (male and
female) came from LBRA.
Unidentified
woman sculling in the Marine Stadium ca. 1934
Women's competitive rowing
began to flourish in the U.S. at about the time of the LBRA renaissance,
and under the coaching of Tom McKibbon, the first three women in LBRA soon
became nationally competitive. Karen McCloskey and Melinda Collis rowed
the double sculls in 1970, and when Karen declined to row in the '71
nationals, newcomer Joan Lind (now Van Blom) teamed up with Melinda to win
silver at the U. S. National Championships. In 1972, Joan won the
national single sculling title and the women's squad learned that women's
rowing was to become an Olympic sport in the 1976 Games in Montreal. She
and her Long Beach Squad teammates competed fiercely with one another for
the top sculling spot, and in 1976 at Montreal, Joan won silver in the
single just .6 seconds behind an East German, and thus won the first
Olympic medal in U.S. Women's Rowing history. Other pioneers in women's
rowing from the Long Beach Squad, Jan Palchickof and Diane Braceland
competed in the double, and Liz Hills, Lisa Hansen, Karen McCloskey,
Claudia Schneider and coxswain Irene Moreno competed in the coxed quad.
Photos from LBRA's "First Women" Reunion at the
1999 Christmas Regatta
Fifty two years after Los
Angeles hosted the Olympics for the first time, the summer games returned
in 1984. That year the Women's Olympic Sculling trials were held in the
Marine Stadium, but FISA chose Lake Casitas as the Olympic venue, since
the 2nd Street bridge (which now spans the 2000 meter course) and tides
mean it doesn't meet their exacting standards for the Olympic Games. With
Tom McKibbon and John Van Blom coaching, the women's quadruple sculls team
of Lisa Rhode (LBRA), Anne Marden (LBRA), Joan Lind (LBRA), Ginny Gilder
(Boston Rowing Club) and coxswain Kelly Rickson (ZLAC) won a silver medal.
Jr. Rowing at LBRA was
resuscitated after the 1984 Olympic in Los Angeles with the help of a
$150,000 grant from the Amateur Athletic Foundation. Ongoing assistance
from LBRA, the Junior Parents and grants from the Fieldstone Foundation
and the Albert Riengardt Foundation have helped it to grow to over 70
young men and women from high schools throughout the southern L.A. and
northern Orange Counties. Ian Simpson (recent U.S. Women's National Team
Assistant Coach) and Bill Bater (former U.S. National Team member)
currently head up the coaching.
LBJC has produced
back-to-back national championship women's quads and competes all school
year in scores of regattas throughout California. LBRA and the LBJC are
currently raising funds to expand the boathouse so as to add another boat
bay for the Juniors, and to provide sorely needed women's locker room and
shower facilities in the boathouse itself.
LBRA recently hosted the
1997 U.S. Masters National Championships and hopes to host the FISA World
Masters Championships someday soon. We keep ourselves busy between
national and international events by hosting no less than seven regattas
and one indoor rowing race each year. See the
Events page for details on how you can join us at any or all of these
races.
Thanks to excellent
coaching, ideal weather and wonderfully sheltered water, our club has
produced scores of national team members, Olympic coaches and Olympic
medalists over the last 66 years and still serves as a training center
for elite rowers and national team members in the Elite Rowing Group under
the guidance of U.S. National Team veteran Bill Bater, who took over after
the ERG founder Ian Simpson became an assistant coach to the U.S. Women's
National Team. But launching rowers into the stratosphere of
international competition is by no means our sole aim.
Masters (27+), especially Women's
Masters rowing has taken off here in Long Beach since it began in earnest
in 1980. Whether it is in recreational rowing or international competition. A.C. duPont, Jan
Mazgajski, Alfredo Montenegro, Ken Plumb, Carlos Recharte, Steve Guentz
and other coaches have given countless hours of patient, expert advice to
build and sustain the program. Our membership stands at just under 300.
Under the leadership of
Bill Goldner, Joel Sebastian, Tony Timtiman, and Peter Vescovi the Long
Beach Junior Crew grew rapidly and reached championship caliber winning
two national titles in the Women's Quad. The Juniors' website is located
at the LBJC
website. U.S. National Team assistant coach Ian Simpson served as
director and head coach of the crew from 2000-2006. Former U. S.
National Team member Bill Bater
coached alongside Ian Simpson from 2000-2006 and in the Fall of 2006
assumed the role of director of LBJC and head coach the Men's Junior Crew.
After many years of
coaching from Bill Lockyer, California State University-Long Beach
continues to produce champions from its ranks at the college, national
team an Olympic levels. Under the current leadership of Mike Vescovi
(Men's Head Coach) and Steve Guentz (Women's Head Coach) the university
attracts and trains talented athletes in the comaraderie, discipline and
high art of crew. Visit their website at
http://www.csulb.edu/~lbcrew/.
A New Era of Growth
In 1997 John Nunn and A.C. duPont drafted designs
for an expansion on the existing boathouse on the back of a napkin.
The idea was to add a sorely needed women's locker room, shower and
bathroom, since the original boathouse was constructed before Title IX and
the addition of women's rowing events to the Olympics transformed the
sport. By the mid 1990s, women's rowing at LBRA had exceeded the
men's masters program in size, which also created a shortage of storage
space for shells. After four years of re-design, negotiations with
CSU-LB, securing zoning clearances and building permits, and continuous
fundraising, construction finally began in 2001. Joe Juge and Jim
Litzinger donated hundreds of hours volunteering their professional
expertise and skilled labor to ensure quality workmanship and materials.
By spring of 2003 the boathouse was taking shape (click here). And
by late summer 2004, the expansion was nearly complete (click here).
By 2005 the expansion was complete, with the locker rooms and showers
complete, and the gym and multipurpose room fully outfitted with weights
and ergs.
Angela Madsen--a national champion in her own
right--founded the California Adaptive Rowing Program (CARP)
in the late 1990s to provide athletes throughout Southern California with
the equipment and facilities to learn to row, and train and compete at the
highest levels nationally and internationally. Thanks to her
efforts, LBRA and the Pete Archer Rowing Center provide access to the
beautiful waters of the Alamitos Bay and Naples Island for everyone.
Home to Juniors, Masters, Adaptive, Elite and
Collegiate rowing, LBRA is poised for continued growth and service in the
recreational and competitive rowing community.
Join LBRA and help make
some history!
