Club sport or varsity, once you get on the waters, the labels go away and the only thing that matters is how fast you are.

The Grand Valley State University rowing team proved this adage true at the San Diego Crew Classic this weekend. The GVSU men won their first heat of the Cal Cup on Saturday with a time of 6 minutes and 3.23 seconds, while the women took third place in their heat with a time of 6:55.858. On Sunday, the women finished first in the Petite Final with a time of 7:41.74, and the men took home the victory in the American Specialty Health Cal Cup with a time of 6:32.09, narrowly edging out the University of Notre Dame by 1.46 seconds and the University of Purdue by 2.87 seconds.

“The girls rode a great clean race and the guys made a great daring move at the end,” said head coach John Bancheri. “Everyone in the country is watching it, so it’s exciting to get this kind of recognition from your peers around the United States. The beauty of it is that we came out swinging hard, but usually our starts are not as fast and we made a nice move in the middle and then they charged back.”

The Laker men were motivated by teammate Robbie DeWeerd, who is currently serving in Afghanistan.

“We named our boat after him and we were really pulling for him today,” said senior Marco Benedetti. “There was a call with about 750 to go and our guys yelled, ‘Make Robbie proud, make Robbie proud.’ That really set us up and fueled us for the last minute of the race where we were able to take it.”

Although the classic was a relatively new experience for the GVSU women, the team still defeated reigning four-time NCAA Division II champions Western Washington University on their way to victory.

“This is really exciting for us,” said junior Carey Mankins. “None of the girls in the boat have ever been to this race before, so we were all pretty nervous and excited to be here. When we got to the venue and saw how many crews were here and saw the race course, we saw how big of a race this was and how important it was for us to make a name for our school.”

GVSU will use this as a momentum builder for the rest of the season. Bancheri said he is pleased with the progress his team has made so far with their training.

“We haven’t really done any speed work or speed preparation,” he said. “This was our first real race of the year. To this point, we mostly did distance type work. In the past week we prepared for it a little bit, but we’re still in the building process so it bodes well for us in the future.”

The next action for the GVSU rowing teams will be Saturday at the 17th-annual Don Lubbers Cup Regatta.

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