Bob Ernst, Millennium Hall of Fame

Richard Dunn

Here, we have Newport Harbor and the Upper Newport Bay, but rowing

paradise for many is based at the University of Washington.

With Puget Sound as a playground, the Huskies have a rich rowing

history and a long-respected crew program that enjoys as much

international power as any institution in the country.

For Bob Ernst, a former Costa Mesa High and Orange Coast College

football and aquatics standout, the opportunity to coach crew at

Washington -- without ever having rowed for the Huskies -- was like

winning the coaching lottery.

“At a place like this, in rowing you can do whatever you dream of,”

Ernst said. “Wanna coach the Olympic team? Wanna go one-on-one with the

Soviets? Harvard? This is the place where they think rowing is big time.”

Ernst, in his 28th year as Washington’s head crew coach, didn’t start

rowing until his junior year at UC Irvine, where he played on the

Anteaters’ first athletic team (men’s water polo) and was instrumental in

coming up with the university’s distinct mascot.

Then, following a stint in the military, Ernst returned to UCI as the

varsity rowing coach in 1970. But, after five campaigns and much success,

the Anteaters “couldn’t afford to pay me.”

When a position at Washington opened up for a freshmen crew coach in

1974, Ernst said he “couldn’t get here fast enough.”

Two years later, Ernst coached his first U.S. Olympic rowing team at

the 1976 Montreal Games, while he was still the Huskies’ freshmen coach.

“What a great place to live, and they like rowing here. Rowing and

football,” Ernst said. “Me and (Washington football coach) Rick

Neuheisel. I think they like him better, but he’s a real good guy.

“It’s fun coaching here. For that kid who went to Costa Mesa, you

couldn’t dream any bigger, wanting to play football at Orange Coast

College and getting to do that, then sharing locker rooms here with the

(Husky) football and basketball coaches.”

Ernst was the U.S. national rowing coach for 17 years and coached in

four Olympic Games, three times as head coach. In 1984, his celebrated

U.S. women’s eight captured the gold medal at the Los Angeles Games.

But before Ernst landed in “rowing heaven” in Seattle, Wash., and won

numerous championships, he was a swimmer and water polo player at OCC and

UCI, following legendary former coach Al Irwin to open the new Irvine

school in 1965.

As members of the Anteaters’ first athletic team in ‘65, they were

allowed to pick the school’s mascot.

“We decided what we wanted it to be and brainwashed everybody,” Ernst

said. “Pat Glasgow was really the godfather, you could say, of coming up

with Anteaters (as a mascot). I was his henchman.”

After playing football and swimming at Costa Mesa (circa ‘63), Ernst

said “it was a dream come true playing on the football team at Orange

Coast that won the (‘63) national championship.

“When I played at Costa Mesa High, we really had pretty marginal teams

and I was dying to get over to Orange Coast and play for Dick Tucker and

those guys. In ‘62, (the Pirates) lost only one game.”

Even though Ernst wasn’t a starter on the Pirates’ J.C. national

championship gridiron squad of ’63 -- he was a backup center and long

snapper who “played every quarter of every game” -- he ranks that

experience among his career athletic highlights. Coaching the gold-medal

winning women’s eight at the ’84 LA Games is another unforgettable

moment.

Ernst, a former crew captain at UCI, was inducted into the UCI

Athletic Hall of Fame in 1985, along with friend and former teammate Bill

Leach. Leach, an Olympic kayaker, and Ernst marched together during

opening ceremonies of the ’76 Montreal Games.

Ernst played only one year of football at OCC, before water polo and

swimming took over. Irwin at the time was OCC’s aquatics coach. “Then we

all followed (Irwin) to UCI to open a first-year school,” said Ernst, who

then dedicated himself to rowing full-time his senior year.

A former member of the Newport Beach Lifeguards, Ernst grew up hearing

about, the rubbing elbows with, Olympians in the Newport-Mesa community,

mostly swimmers, kayakers and water polo players.

“That was a big, big part of my life,” he said. “As a kid, I was

watching the Olympics on TV, then it became tangible because you saw how

many great athletes were around here ... being an Olympian was not so far

removed.”

Ernst, the latest honoree in the Daily Pilot Sports Hall of Fame,

lives in Edmonds, Wash., with his wife, Ellen, and two children: Tom, 7,

and Abigail, 5.