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No athletic team wants to blemish a perfect record.

Freshman rower Vanessa Teff cites this truism as the main reason why her No. 14 UCLA rowing team excelled at this weekend’s Stanford Invitational in Redwood Shores, Calif.

Heading into the tournament, the boat held a 3-0 record in dual meets and the team had hopes to continue the streak.

Three races later, competing against No. 15 Tennessee, Central Florida and Clemson, the Bruins V8 boat doubled its mark in the win column, improving to 6-0.

While Teff and senior Liz Pallas-Jacobs both expected the best matchup to be against Tennessee, the closest race actually proved against Central Florida where UCLA pulled off a come-from-behind win by only one second.

“We were down until the last 250 meters,” Pallas-Jacobs said. “Central Florida had open water on us for a lot of the race.”

The V8 girls experienced firsthand what their coach Amy Fuller Kearney means by her expression, “It’s a 2000-meter race,” when their boat managed to pull ahead just before the finish line at the 2000-meter mark.

“We were down until the end just like in the Minnesota race,” Teff said, referring to the previous weekend’s competition.

While many people, including Teff, predicted Tennessee to be UCLA’s strongest opponent, the Bruins led that entire race and won by a couple of seconds.

The team hopes to carry the winning record over to the coming weekend when they host the 31st-annual Miller Cup at Marina Del Rey. Facing teams such as San Diego State, LMU and UC Santa Barbara, UCLA will aim to capture first place for the fourth year in a row.

In addition to the team’s desire to maintain a faultless record, Teff cites her teammates’ determination and feistiness as reasons for their success throughout the season.

Those attributes will prove essential for important upcoming races including the USC meet in two weeks.

Not only is the Bruin-Trojan matchup important because of the crosstown rivalry, but the Bruins face many challenges against USC this year. For one, USC crew is ranked third and Pallas-Jacobs points out they are “consistently a really good team.”

Additionally, the race takes

place on USC’s home course, which could give the Trojans an extra advantage.

Two weekends after the USC match, sophomore Vanessa Jansen expects UCLA to surprise lots of people with great performances at the Pac-10 Tournament.