When the men’s and women’s eights teams of Grand Valley State University’s club rowing team hit the water Saturday — and potentially Sunday — this weekend, they’ll have one teammate and fan cheering from half-way around the world.

“He’s a team captain, he’s a real athlete, and one of the fastest rowers we have, so we’re definitely missing him,” co-captain and teammate Justin Wegner said.

Junior rower Robbie DeWeerd, currently serving with the United States Navy, left Grand Valley State University and his teammates on Jan. 2 in preparation for military deployment. After training and a 10-day leave in early March, DeWeerd was deployed to Afghanistan, where he will work as a corrections officer until Dec. 12, 2012.

With a spirited and hardworking member of their team absent, there was little hesitation among the GVSU crew when it came time to clad a name to the side of a brand new boat the team is taking with them out to California.

“We’re demo-ing a boat from King right now and so it didn’t have an official name,” Wegner said.

Head coach John Bancheri said the boat from King Racing Shells, a rowing equipment manufacturer based in Norwalk, Conn., was provided for free for trial use during the spring season.

“They gave us a $35,000 boat as a demo, for the season, for free,” Bancheri said. “So it was unnamed and tradition is that when you go to your first race the boat should be named.”

Though the “test-drive” boat, as Bancheri called it, is much needed, the boat is being “borrowed” and the team isn’t able mark a name on it as the team has done on the other boats in the Laker fleet.

But that didn’t stop the GVSU crew from breaking tradition.

“The guys said ‘Let’s just put Robbie’s name on there because he’s part of the boat,’” Bancheri said. “They put it on with electrical tape. Robbie was in the boat in the fall season and he would’ve been there in the spring too, so that’s what they’re trying to say: that he’s still a part of them. It’s one of those band of brothers things.”

The teams will compete with their boat, “Robbie,” Saturday in their preliminary races. Winners advance to the finals on Sunday.

The men’s team are seeded No. 1 of 20 teams and will race against Orange Coast College, Oklahoma City University, Washington State University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, California State University-Long Beach and Chapman University in their first race. The GVSU women will take the water in lane four of the third heat of their first race and will face the University of Iowa, Oregon State University, Saint Joseph’s University, University of Miami (FL) and Santa Clara University.

“The women are ranked No. 10,” Bancheri said. “There’s a lot less experience because we graduated five out of the varsity eights last year, so we’re what people consider as rebuilding. But to our pleasant surprise, this year’s team has become very competitive, so we’re in the hunt.”

Wegner is expecting pretty tough competition from the men’s competition, but feels confident that his team will do well.

“Last time we went, we placed second so we all have expectations to go in and race according to our season,” Wegner said. “With the warm weather we got on the water early so that extra time has helped us a lot. We’re all really excited to travel to the other side of the country and represent our school. We’ve all worked really hard all winter to get here, so it should be a really good experience.”

Live results of the 2012 San Diego Crew Classic will be made available on Twitter at www.twitter.com/crewclassic. Live video is also available on race day at www.crewclassic.org/video.

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