As of Dec. 22, 2023, the West Coast Conference announced that Oregon State University and Washington State University’s Olympic sports teams would join the conference for the foreseeable future.

This move included the Beaver’s women’s rowing team, who will now compete in the WCC Rowing Championships on May 16-17 at Lake Natoma, California. 

The move to the WCC presents a set of newfound opportunities and challenges to the Beavers. With the dissolution of the Pac-12, the Beavers are coming from arguably one of the most competitive collegiate rowing conferences in history. 

“The Pac-12 conference was really prolific,” senior coxswain Emily Wood said. 

The Pac-12 was home to nine of the 27 national rowing titles in NCAA history, most recently acquired by Stanford University in 2023. The conference was not a cakewalk by any means, and teams such as the Beavers often found themselves in a unique position within the conference. 

“For the last five to 10 years, we’ve been a bubble team…The bubble teams aren’t the schools that are your automatic qualifiers but are schools with really high standings for an at-large bid,” Wood said.  

Historically, the NCAA selection committee has picked the top 4 teams out of the Pac-12. This has included the Beavers on multiple occasions, such as in 2022 when the team placed 14th at the NCAAs in Sarasota, Florida, the team’s best finish ever. 

Unfortunately for the Beavers, the WCC does not boast the same historical prestige that the Pac-12 did and rarely receives at-large bids. 

The WCC now presents a new opportunity for OSU: the chance at a conference title. 

The new conference boasts competition that the Beavers have historically beaten or had comparable speeds to like WSU or Gonzaga. 

“It allows us to see and race at the championship level with a lot of competitors we’ve been racing already and allows us an easier pathway to the NCAAs than we’ve had previously,” the newly appointed head coach of Oregon State’s women’s rowing team, Micheal Eichler said

Giulia Clerici, a junior and World Champion from Italy expressed, “we’re shifting our attitude from ‘how little can we lose by’ to ‘how much can we win by?’”

This newfound attitude is enticing going into the upcoming season. 

Despite the possibility of a conference championship, the Beavers don’t want to become complicit in their new home. 

“We’re still gonna go outside of our conference and stay competitive,” Clerici said. 

Similar remarks were heard from every team member interviewed. Across the board, the team mentality remains the same. 

“The mentality of being a nationally competitive program, chasing gold medal standards, that has not changed and that is what I would say is the highlight of this program and its athletes. They are incredibly hungry and eager to excel,” Eichler remarked.

The goal of the team this year is not just to win the WCC championship, but to excel at the national level as well. To do this, the team is taking on a competitive spring schedule and will compete outside their new conference. 

The Beavers will attend the Big 10 Invitational in Florida. They’re set to face rowing powerhouses such as Washington, Tennessee, Brown, Michigan, and Ohio State. Even if the team does make the NCAA championship, they don’t want to settle for less at the national level. 

“We want to continue pushing all season for one that deserves selection. I don’t want us to feel like we have one shot for NCAAs. I don’t wanna just go and finish dead last,” fifth-year Annelise Norkitis noted.

Besides the shot at a first-place automatic bid to nationals, the WCC is different from the Pac-12 in other ways. While both conferences raced the NCAA selection boats (Varsity 8+, JV 8+, Varsity 4+), the Pac-12 had the addition of a 3V8+ race as well as a Novice 8+. 

Meanwhile, the WCC only has an additional 2V4+. This means that at the moment, fewer Beavers will be attending their conference championships than previously. 

“I think that we have the roster depth to travel with three full eights and a four,” Norkitis said, wishing that the Beavs could show the true talent of their entire roster.

Despite the dramatic changes that come with conference realignment, Eichler wants to preserve the core of Oregon State women’s rowing. 

“The most important thing for me is that on the end side of this is that we are graduating individuals who are ready for life’s challenges and opportunities. I want to win, I want to win a lot, I’m very competitive and the most important thing we do is that we prepare individuals for success and how to handle failure” Eichler noted. 

Oregon State’s women’s and men’s rowing teams will host their annual “Crash Beavs” indoor race on February 22 at the Truax Indoor Center from 9-11 a.m.

The Beavers will host their first home race at Dexter Lake on March 29 where they will host Gonzaga and the University of Portland. They will return to Dexter on May 3 to face the University of Southern California,  the University of San Diego, and Sacramento State University.