West Coast College Season Gets in Gear

While their colleagues on the East Coast have been racing for a month, college sailing on the West Coast is finally getting underway. Stanford got a head start on the rest of the competition by traveling east to Yale to sail in the season opening Harry Anderson Trophy. The Cardinal placed eighth overall with Dave Phillips and Anna Vu taking seventh in A division while the team of Pete Deming and Taylor Clark placed ninth in the B fleet.

The NWICSA kicked off its season last weekend with the Northwest Singlehanded Championships at Western Washington. After seven men’s races and six women’s races Saturday and a long Sunday morning of waiting for breeze that never came, Washington’s Brendan Fahey and Haley Siegenthaler will be heading to Florida come November to represent the Northwest at the ICSA Singlehanded Championships. Fahey, a sophomore, hopes to improve on last year’s 10th place finish. While Siegenthaler, a freshman, will get her first taste of championship college racing.

Fahey easily won the men’s title by nine points, but racing was tight for second with Western’s Angus Brackett and Portland State’s Jeff Causey both ended racing with 22 points. Brackett winning the tie-breaker. The story was similar in the women’s fleet where Siegenthaler won by 11 points but racing was close for the rest of the fleet with only one point separating Washington’s Kim Kishi, Portland State’s Anika Olsen, and Washington’s Ellie Wilson for second through fourth places.

Cal Maritime also came home a winner last weekend. CMA headed back to Vallejo, Calif., with the Shields Trophy, winning the service academy big boat championship over host Navy by two points.

The Bryson Women’s Intersectional at Stanford and Men’s Singlehanded PCC’s at the Alamitos Bay Yacht Club will start the fall season for the PCIYRA next weekend. Two time men’s champion Bryan Lake from Hawaii is red-shirting this fall leaving Stanford’s Brian Haines and Hawaii’s Matt Stine as the top returning sailors from last year’s Men’s Pacific Coast Championships. Stanford freshman Emery Wagner, fresh off a summer where he won the U.S. Youth Champs and finished 9th at Radial Worlds will look to make a mark on the PCIYRA, while a little further north Western Washington will be looking to defend their Northwest Sloop title when Portland State hosts the Northwest Sloop Championship at the Rose City YC in Cal 20’s.

Women’s Circuit Picks Up Steam

Weekend No. 4 of the 2003/04 college sailing season consisted of only one intersectional regatta, the Hood Trophy at Tufts. So many collegiate sailors participated in regional regattas or worked on qualifying for single-handed eliminations in their respective districts.

The pace will pick up quickly, however, this coming weekend is jam-packed with four intersectional regattas. The following weekend has seven intersectionals. “Heading into next weekend,” says Dartmouth Head Coach Brian Doyle, “the action really gets going. There is a qualification event almost every weekend until the championships in November.”

Several of the competitions will be women’s only events, which make up the women’s circuit in college sailing. “The women’s circuit is great,” says Jennie Philbrick, captain of the Harvard women’s team. “Having competitions for women only would seemingly limit the number of competitors, but there are a lot of great women sailors. The competition is intense and the scene is really friendly and fun.”

|

|

| |

|

|

| |

| © Kevin Gunn|

| |

|

|

| |

| The best female skippers will compete in both women’s events and coed events, like the 2003 Coed Nationals on Lake St. Clair in Detroit.* * *|

| |

|

|

|

The women’s circuit already kicked off its season last weekend at Dartmouth’s Mrs. Hurst Bowl, the first women’s intersectional of the season. The event attracted eighteen teams from three districts (NEISA, MAISA, and SAISA), and was won by Dartmouth.

“The Mrs. Hurst Bowl went well for us,” says Emily East, who skippered in B division for host team. “The racing was very close and a few races were won by inches. I was really happy with how we sailed, considering it was such a tough fleet of competitors.”

Though most women sailors consider themselves members of their college coed teams as well, the women’s sailing circuit has its own rankings, which come out simultaneously with the coed rankings throughout the year. Currently, Hawaii is the top-ranked women’s team in the country, although Hawaii has yet to compete against Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth, or Tufts, the four New England teams which round out the top five.

At the Mrs. Hurst Bowl, Tufts took second place overall, Harvard took third, and Yale was fourth, confirming their top national rankings.

“The women’s circuit is challenging when all the women sailors are present,” says Doyle. “AJ Crane and Kristen Tysell from Tufts have demonstrated recent success in both coed and women’s intersectional events by winning A division at both the Mrs. Hurst Bowl and the Hood Trophy. The field is strong and will be competitive all year.”

Looking ahead, both the Navy Women’s Fall Intersectional and the Stu Nelson at Connecticut College should bring together strong women’s teams from around the country to battle it out for the top rankings.