The Cal 100: No. 94 -- Steve Gladstone

Gladstone won six rowing national championships at Cal, and he made an impact as the Bears' athletic director

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. 94: Steve Gladstone

Cal Sports Connection: Former Cal rowing coach and athletic director

Claim to Fame: He coached 14 national rowing champions and made an impact as Cal’s athletic director.

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Steve Gladstone will be 82 years old when he attempts to set the record for most Intercollegiate Rowing Association (IRA) national titles by a men’s rowing coach in the June 2023 competition. However, he will try to do it at the expense of Cal, the school where he gained his fame as a rowing coach and administrator.

As of this writing, Gladstone is tied with Charles "Pop" Courtney of Cornell, who won 14 IRA championships between 1901 and 1915 (and won multiple IRA titles in the same year). Gladstone will go after No. 15 when he leads his second-ranked Yale varsity eight crew in the nationals, where his biggest challenge will come from No. 1-ranked Cal.

Gladstone began the first of his two stints as Cal’s rowing coach in 1973, turning Cal into the premier men’s crew in the country. He won one national championship at Cal before moving on to Brown to collect five more national titles.

But Gladstone returned to Cal (1997 to 2008) and won five more IRA national titles, giving him six in Berkeley and tying him with Ky Ebright for the Cal record for most IRA titles. 

He also served as Cal’s athletic director for three years during that second stint. Gladstone was not a candidate for the athletic director’s job in 2001, but his impassioned speech about what an athletic director should be caused Cal officials to talk him into taking the job. His most significant move as AD was hiring football coach Jeff Tedford, who had no previous head coaching experience.

Gladstone later became the crew coach at Yale, leading the Bulldogs to three straight IRA national championships from 2017 through 2019. But Cal -- coached by Scott Frandsen, who rowed for Cal when Gladstone was the Bears’ coach – beat Yale in last year’s IRA nationals.

No. 95 -- Swimming star Nathan Adrian

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Cover photo of Steve Gladstone courtesy of Cal Athletics

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