Glen Lake's Julie Bennett Rows 2,800 Miles Across the Pacific in 40 Days

Every so often a Laker story comes along that stops us cold, and this is one of them: Julie (Adams) Bennett, a 1982 Glen Lake graduate, just rowed clean across the Pacific Ocean. Two thousand eight hundred miles of open water, from Monterey, Calif., all the way to Kauai, Hawaii, in the World's Toughest Row — and she and her crew, aboard a boat named Moar Than Us, landed 40 days after shoving off June 9. Consider the average crossing over the history of this thing runs 62 days, and even the year's fastest boat took 36. Forty days, with hands only. Think back to who she was here: a middle distance runner on the Lakers track team, mostly the 400 and 800 and relays, a key member of the cheer team, throwing shot put against Mesick. She picked rowing up late, after her son Steven joined as a freshman, then rowed on through a hip replacement in her 40s, all 5-foot-4 of her, two-hour shifts in daylight and three in the dark. That is Glen Lake grit.