April 26, 2008- The annual rivalry race was cancelled Friday evening with questions of the eligibility surrounding the Estonian National team, who are rowing for USC this spring. The two programs could not come to an agreement on who would race and the events that would be contested.

On Friday evening UCLA received notification from the PAC-10 conference that USC’s Estonian rowers were NOT eligible for the PAC-10 Championship to be held May 18th on Lake Natoma. “When I got the notification from the conference,” said Coach Mokha. ”I tried reaching the USC coach by phone to decide how we would proceed on Saturday with this ruling in mind. By 7:30pm I had not heard back from him and told my team we would not be racing.”

Team President Kristian Kanya, “We were willing to race these Estonians as exhibition but not as a part of our dual if they were not eligible.” “It is unfortunate for everyone that it came to this,” said Coach Mokha. “I did not want to go down to SC in the morning without the ‘rules to the game’ specifically laid out before hand. It would not have been positive if we had.”

Next up for the Bruins is the PCRC regatta and PAC-10 Championship on May 17-18 at Lake Natoma.