BERKELEY – The industry recognitions continue to come in for the back-to-back national champion California men's rowing team as Luca Vieira was named IRCA Coxswain of the Year, and head coach Scott Frandsen along with assistant coaches Brandon Shald and Jason Elefant won IRCA Coach and Staff of the Year honors.
 
The annual coxswain award recognizes an individual who has demonstrated great leadership and skill to motivate his or her team to compete at the best of their ability. Vieira is coming off his third year as coxswain for the varsity eight crew that went undefeated for the second consecutive season and managed the team to dual wins over No. 4 Washington, No. 5 Syracuse, No. 6 Northeastern, No. 10 Boston University and No. 14 Wisconsin, in addition to defeating No. 2 Yale and No. 3 Princeton to capture the IRA national championship. On Tuesday, Vieira was named an IRCA first-team All-American.
 
"I'm thrilled for Luca to be recognized as the coxswain of the year," Frandsen said. "He did an outstanding job of guiding our top group, executing the race plan and steering the boat safely and confidently down the racecourse which ultimately gave the crew the best chance to win a national championship."
 
Frandsen is fresh off leading his team to back-to-back IRA and Pac-12 championships. The IRA national championship marks the first time the program has won consecutive titles since the team won four straight titles from 1999-02 and he is just the second coach in program history to win the IRCA award in consecutive seasons. In May, Frandsen was also named the Pac-12 Rowing Coach of the Year for the second straight season. Under his leadership, the second varsity crew also went undefeated this season on its way to capturing the Kennedy Challenge Cup at the IRAs.
 
The annual staff award recognizes the outstanding work done by the assistant coach(es), volunteer coach(es), boatmen, etc., from each division in service to their team and in support of the head coach. Shald and Elefant led their respective third varsity and varsity four crews to a national championship at this month's IRAs, which resulted in the program sweeping all four races for the first time in school history. The third varsity took home the Stewards Cup while the varsity four won the Eric Will Trophy.
 
"It is a great honor to win coach and staff of the year," Frandsen said. "The past two years have been a great full team effort and a huge amount of credit needs to go to Brandon, Jason, Dave (Adams), Jack (Smith) and Mike (Chandler), who helped me take care of all of the details and gave us a chance to win. A big thank you to everyone in our administration and all of our support staff that help our team on a daily basis. There are a lot of outstanding coaches in our league doing great things with their programs, so I don't take these awards lightly. A special thank you to Steve Gladstone as well. Steve has been a great coach, mentor and friend to me over the past few decades and his presence will be missed in our sport. "
 
Cal's former head coach and director of athletics, Gladstone recently retired after serving as the head coach of Yale's Heavyweight Crew for the previous 13 seasons.
 
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