The Cal 100: No. 26 -- Ky Ebright

Ebright won six rowing national titles and three Olympic gold medals with Cal crews he coached

We count down the top 100 individuals associated with Cal athletics, based on their impact in sports or in the world at large – a wide-open category. See if you agree.

No. 26: Ky Ebright

Cal Sports Connection: Ebright was Cal’s rowing coach for 36 years, from 1923-24 through 1958-59.

Claim to Fame: Cal crews coached by Ebright won three Olympic gold medals and six IRA national championships.

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“No man had ever had such an impact on the sport, and no man ever will.”

That’s what Jim Lemmon said about 5-foot-6 Carroll “Ky” Ebright in 1959 when Lemmon succeeded Ebright as Cal’s crew coach, according to San Francisco Bay Area Sports: Golden Gate Athletics, Recreation and Community.

It’s hard to disagree.

When Ebright came over from the University of Washington to coach Cal rowing in 1923, the Bears were barely competitive. But under Enright’s leadership, Cal became the preeminent crew in the world.

Ebright’s eight-oared crews won three Olympic gold medals (1928, 1932, 1948), and all three boats were Cal varsity-8 crews.

In those days, eight-man college crews competed for the United States’ Olympic berth. It wasn’t until years later that rowers were  plucked from different programs and put together to form an Olympic crew.

Ebright is the only person to coach crews to three gold medals, and it could have been more had it not been for World War II. Ebright had his best Cal crew in 1939, but the 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled because of the war. When the Olympics returned in 1948, Ebright's Cal crew won again.

Photo courtesy of Cal Athletics

Let’s put that in perspective. This was not a case of an individual athlete maintaining elite status for a number of years. This was a coach taking eight Cal rowers and turning them into the best eight-man team in the world. Then taking eight different Cal students and turning them into the world’s best. Then doing it again and again at a time when rowing was a big deal in American sports. Reportedly 10,000 people were on hand when Ebright's Cal crew won the Olympic gold medal in Amsterdam.

It's comparable to what John Wooden did at UCLA, and Ebright did it without athletic scholarships. He simply sized up incoming Cal freshmen, brought them into the program, taught them how to row, and made them gold-medal winners.

Besides the three gold medals, Ebright’s Cal varsity-8 won six IRA national championships.

When Ebright retired in 1959, Time magazine featured him in an article, lauding his accomplishments.

Cal had a $80,000, life-size, 300-pound bronze statue of Ebright erected and placed at the Cal Boathouse. It was important enough that NBC Bay Area reported the theft of statue and its subsequently recovery.

Ebright died in 1979 at the age of 85, but a 2018 article by RowingRelated ranked Ebright as the 11th-best rowing coach of alltime. Nine of the top 10 were from outside the United States, and the one American in that group was a women’s rowing coach. So perhaps we could call Ebright the best American men’s rowing coach of alltime.

Which brings us back to Jim Lemmon’s quote.

The Cal 100: No. 27 -- Helen Hull Jacobs

Cover photo of Ky Ebright courtesy of Cal Athletics

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