The Dartmouth varsity women's sailing team capped an impressive third place finish in the National Collegiate Sailing Competitions with two members of their team earning All-American sailing honors last week. A third Big Green sailor was also awarded an honorable mention All-American skipper for this year.
Casey Hogan '99 was named one of 10 female All-American skippers in the country, while team captain Blair Seidler '96 was named one of 15 coed All-American crews in the country. Leigh Lucas '98 was also awarded an honorable mention women's All-American skipper.
"This is very impressive," Sailing Coach Brian Doyle said. "They came in with a lot of talent."
The Big Green athletes were selected by the Intercollegiate Yacht Racing Associations' All-American Committee.
The committee based its selections on the performances in the fall and spring seasons and results from the National Championships. A total of 197 Colleges were considered by the committee, Doyle said.
Each year, the committee selects 10 female All-American skippers each year with five honorable mentions, and 15 coed skippers with five honorable mentions. Finally, 15 coed crews are picked from the nationwide pool of teams for the All-American crew honor.
"We were hoping for it, but it is tough to call when [the team] is so young because we haven't seen them sail as much as we would like," he said. "They really stepped up and took over and did an excellent job with it."
Last year, out of 210 colleges Dartmouth sported two coed All-American skippers as well as one honorable mention coed skipper and one All-American crew, Doyle said.
"The thing to remember is that all these people who were All-American last year graduated," he said. "It is a whole new group this year and we already have three All-Americans. It was a rebuilding year on the coed side but these were women who sprouted and performed to their potential."
At the Nationals, Dartmouth finished third out of the 16 Colleges that competed. First place was award to Tufts University while the Naval Academy grabbed second.
"Navy beat us by only one point," Doyle said. "When you finish a race, you get the number of points in order of finish. In the regatta, there were 15 races in two divisions. So that means out of 30 races that counted we finished badly in only one place in one race."
The other two Ivy League schools that made it to the nationals were the Harvard/Radcliffe women's team and the Brown University sailing team.
"Harvard, that is, Radcliffe, finished sixth and Brown was tenth," Doyle said. "It was really great that there are three Ivy's out of the top 16 College sailing teams in the nation."
"But it was still good to beat them," Doyle added.
"It was terrific," he said. "We had a really terrific year. We were rebuilding in term of the coed but we will be ready to do some damage next year."
"Two of the three All-Americans from Dartmouth are sticking around so we will have a very success year, next year," Doyle said.
In addition to the All-American awards, the sailing team's B division was award the Sperry Topsider Award for the Individual Division that contributed the most to the team's overall performance. The two members of that team awarded the honor were Lucas and Seidler.
