The Dartmouth College women's sailing team finished second at the national championships, which concluded late Wednesday evening.
The second-place finish marked an improvement at this event for the Big Green, a program that has quietly become one of the most powerful in the nation under outgoing coach Brian Doyle. Dartmouth placed third in 1994, 1995 and 1996 and was fourth last year.
Dartmouth, which spent much of the year ranked No. 1 in the national collegiate poll by Sailing World magazine, saw this year's run for a title dismantled by Brown. The Bearsrunner-up here a year agocruised to the national title by more than 30 points.
Brown's overall score for the competition was 112 points. Dartmouth finished with 142 points, while Connecticut College was third with 174.
The Bears took control of the championship on the first day as they jumped out to the lead and never looked back.Dartmouth settled right behind the Bears but were unable to make up the difference in the final two days.
Nevertheless, Doyle was pleased with the result and indicated that a total team effort gave the Big Green its success.
"We had seven different people sail this week five in the A Division and two in the B Division," he said. "They all did great."
The Big Green's highlight came in B Division, where senior Leigh Lucas and sophomore Erin Myers finished first out of 16 boats by a wide margin. The duo's 49 points far outshone the second-place competitors, who scored 74.
"Winning B Division felt great because this was my fourth try, and we finally did it," Lucas said.
The Bears clinched the victory in the A Division, however, where the pairing of Katie McDowell and Ciara Knudsen collected a mere 38 points. The Big Green scored 93 points to place fourth in the division.
The Big Green tried all possible lineup combinations in the A division to give them the advantage, but never could find the perfect combination. Casey Hogan '99, Shannon Law '00 and Shannon Laughlin '98 were among those used in the top division.
A near-standstill breeze during the afternoon of May 27the final day of competitionleft the B Division unable to complete their final two races of the day, so the 15th and 16th races in A Division were struck from the record. Scores were tallied for 14 races in each division instead of the usual 16 races that fill a regatta.
