Heading to the waters of Mission Bay, San Diego the Loyola Marymount men's rowing team got their first peak at how their fastest V8 team stood against 15 other collegiate crew outfits.
 
In Saturday's qualifying heat for either a Grand or Petite Final, LMU established a race plan to put themselves in best contention to make Sunday's Grand Final. Finding fair weather conditions, the Lions executed their best race yet, coming off the water with a respectable 6:25.9 down the 2000m course. Unfortunately, the majority of crews on Saturday brought a bit more horsepower, setting a Grand Final entry standard around ten seconds faster than LMU could muster. With a 7th place finish in the heat out of 8, the Lions were sorted into the Petite final for Sunday.
 
Sunday morning weather fared a slight cross/head wind slowing times down. Having executed an ideal race plan on Saturday, the Lions planned on tasting the speed of those faster crews by holding onto contact for as long as they could off the start. In light of that, the Lions left the water with a 5th place finish posting a time of 6:35.1, keeping true to the plan and holding contact with the crews for nearly half the race. 
 
Having experienced an exceptional weekend of racing, the Lions came home in great spirits. LMU successfully established a baseline performance level for next year's San Diego Crew Classic. This entire crew, being juniors and younger, will likely return in full to these waters in 2020 to see if another fall of training can fare better results against the field.
 
The Lions now set sights aside from the V8+ as training the V4+, N4+ and 2- for the WIRA Championship begin.

Lineup:
Coxswain - Nicholas Lee
8 - Sam Johnston
7 - Jake Gimpel
6 - Elton Rosicki
5 - Brent Fisher
4 - Garrett Plekenpol
3 - Sidney Starr
2 - Jacob Laubach
Bow - Aeden Vallejo