No. 1 USC Takes Top-End Power to Indy Brickyard
May 27, 2013 | Women's Rowing
May 27, 2013
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Championship Home Page | Ticket Information
2013 NCAA Women's Rowing Championships
Eagle Creek Park | Indianapolis, Ind.
Friday-Sunday, May 31-June 2
Hosted by Notre Dame and the Indiana Sports Corporation
Weather Update: Twitter @IndSportsCorp
Web Stream: www.NCAA.com/LiveSchedule
Website: www.NCAA.com
LOS ANGELES - The top-ranked USC women's rowing team will put its horsepower to the test against the nation's best crews when it heads to Indianapolis (Eagle Creek Park) for the 2013 NCAA Division I Women's Rowing Championships, this weekend (May 31-June 2).
The Women of Troy make their fifth consecutive team appearance in the NCAA championships; the program's seventh team bid. The Trojans return to the site of their first NCAA championship regatta under head coach Zenon Babraj who guided the varsity eight to a sixth-place finish at Eagle Creek Park in 2003. It is the 15th consecutive appearance at the national championships for the Trojan V8.
USC received the Pac-12's automatic qualifier bid for the second time in program history and has all the pieces in place to contend for the program's first-ever national title. The Trojans finished fifth twice (2007 and 2011) and had one boat win an individual national title--the 1998 varsity four. The Trojan V8+ has earned bronze twice at the NCAA championships (2007 and 2012) while the USC 2V8+ enjoyed its best finish in school history at sixth place in 2011.
The team championship is composed of 22 teams. Eleven conferences were awarded automatic qualification and the remaining 11 slots were filled with at-large selections to complete the championship field. Teams qualifying for the championship as an automatic qualifier or as an at-large are required to field two boats of eight rowers and one boat of four rowers. For the I Eights, II Eights, and Fours, all 22 boats will be seeded into four heats.
Joining USC as automatic qualifiers were Boston University (Colonial Athletic Association); Gonzaga (West Coast Conference); Marist (Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference); Navy (Patriot League); Notre Dame (Big East Conference); Ohio State (Big Ten Conference); Oklahoma (Conference USA); Princeton (The Ivy League); Rhode Island (Atlantic 10 Conference), and Virginia (Atlantic Coast Conference).
Pac-12 champion California topped all at-large selections and was joined by fellow Pac-12 crews from UCLA, Stanford, Washington, and Washington State. Brown, Cornell, Harvard, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Yale rounded out the 22-team championship field.
Preliminary heats are set to begin on Friday, May 31, at 9:10 a.m. CT. Preliminary repechage races are set to start at 3:50 p.m. on the same day. Semifinals will take place on Saturday, June 1, starting at 8:30 a.m. C (places 13-18) and D (places 19-22) finals start at 8:30 a.m. on Sunday, June 2, and petite and grand finals in all three events are set for 10 a.m. on the final day.
2012 NCAA CHAMPIONSHIPS
In 2012, Virginia won its second national title at the NCAA Division I Women's Rowing Championships at Lake Mercer in West Windsor, N.J. The Cavaliers also won in 2010. Virginia claimed the varsity eight title and came in fifth in the II eights and second in the fours. The last Pac-12 team to win the crown was Stanford in 2009. California owns a pair of titles (2005-06) while Washington has three (1997-98, 2001). Brown has won seven of the 16 NCAA women's championships with Harvard the only other title holder (2003).
TICKET INFORMATION
All-session and single-session tickets for the championships can be purchased at www.NCAA.com/tickets through May 29. Beginning May 30, tickets are available on-site (cash only). All-session tickets are $40, while student and senior citizen tickets are $25. The tickets include all three days of competition. Single-session tickets are $15, while student and senior citizen are $10. Parking information is available at www.IndianaSportsCorp.org.
UNITED NATIONS
The Women of Troy may be as diverse a team as there is. The United States is represented by 10 different states with only seven rowers from California. The U.S. is just one of nine different countries represented on USC's varsity roster. Trojan boats have rowers from Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Poland, Serbia, and Sweden. USC's varsity eight lineup includes just one rower from the United States: senior captain Melanie Grindle.
TOP OF THE CLASS
Senior captain Melanie Grindle rose through the ranks as a walk-on rower in her freshman year and has owned the bow seat in USC's varsity eight for the past two seasons. Grindle will attend law school at Columbia in the fall and is the winner of the Pac-12's postgraduate scholarship and the Tom Hansen Pac-12 Medal. She has received Pac-12 All-Academic honors twice, and is a two-time CRCA National Scholar-Athlete.
JOG IN THE FOG
In her spare time, senior coxswain Jennah Blau is an avid distance runner who has completed San Francisco's Nike Half Marathon three times. Blau posted a personal top time of 1:44:00 in her last run.
ALL-AMERICAN EXCHANGE
USC returned two CRCA All-Americans to its 2012-13 roster. Junior stroke Vineta Moca was a second-team selection as a sophomore and senior port Ivana Filipovic is a two-time All-America selection (second team as a sophomore in 2010 and first-team as a junior in 2011). The Trojans have had 23 All-Americans with 20 since head coach Zenon Babraj arrived on campus.
Players Mentioned
