This weekend at the New England Team Racing Championships hosted by Connecticut College and Coast Guard, the 12 best team-racing teams from New England competed for the chance to go to the National Championship, and Dartmouth brought home the gold.
New England is one of the most dominating forces in the national collegiate sailing world. Last week the women's team placed third in the New England Championships, qualifying for Women's Nationals in Texas.
Since then, skippers Lauren Padilla '05 and Emily East '06 along with crew Liz Hyon '05 have been named to the All-New England Women's Team, representing the 10 best women in their disciplines in New England. The dominance of the region is not limited to just the women, as New England also typically sweeps Nationals in both the Team Race Championships as well as the Coed Championships.
Big Green team racers Peter Flemming '05, Killarney Loufek '07, Andrew Loe '06, Elisabeth Kreter '05, Erik Storck '07, Clementine James '05, Todd Whitehead '06 and Jimmy Attridge '07 were pumped when they thrashed through the competition. After 14 races in three round-robins, Dartmouth finished the championship round with 12 wins and two losses. Two fellow Ivies, Yale and Harvard, also qualified with records of 11-3 and 10-4 respectively.
Team racing has a completely different format than fleet racing, match racing, or really any other sport. In team racing each "team" (in this case each college) gets three boats on the water. These three boats go head-to-head in a cumulative scoring race against three boats from another "team." Thus, instead of 15 boats on the water, each representing a different school, team racing has two sets of three boats, each set representing only one school.
Additionally, in a fleet racing regatta there are often upwards of 40 races held in a weekend. With team racing, in each round robin teams only get to face each competing school once, making the stakes for that race all that much higher.
Lucky for Dartmouth boat pairs of Flemming-Loufek, Loe-Kreter, and Storck-James rose to the challenge. The regatta never saw the forecasted 20 to 30 knot winds. Rather, teams battled it out in a soggy three to 12 knots throughout the weekend.
As racing started on Saturday, the 12 teams attending were divided into two groups of six teams for the opening round robin. The bottom two teams were dropped from each group of six. The next round robin combined the two remaining groups of four, again dropping the bottom two teams out of that group of eight, leaving six teams for the championship round robin on Sunday. At the end of the day on Saturday, Dartmouth had gone 4-1 and 4-0, tied with Yale for first place overall.
Though Dartmouth and Yale advanced to the final six along with Harvard, Tufts, MIT and Brown, both Brown and MIT were mathematically out for one of the top three spots, which would have qualified either team for Nationals.
The regatta came down to the last race between Dartmouth and Yale, both with records of 11-2 thus far. As expected, Dartmouth easily defeated Yale. The Big Green team's racing skills, combined with its masterful boat-handling, allowed it to manuever the vessel like an aquatic chess piece and check-mate the Yale squad.
James summed up the Dartmouth team's feelings, "This weekend Dartmouth proved that we are the best team racers out on the water. We pulled more moves and actually team raced more than any other college out there. Some teams peaked earlier in the season and have been unable to keep up their momentum. I feel as though this is just the start for us. We have only had a few weeks of practice on the lake, so between now and nationals we will be able to have a lot more time on the water. A national championship is definitely well within our grasp."
A little further north, Dartmouth was also vicotorious in the Geiger Trophy at MIT, a four-division event sailed in a wide variety of boats. Garrett Holmes '05 and Meaghan Ferrick '07 sailed a Rhodes 19, East and Laura Sheinkopf '07 sailed FJs, Ben Sampson '08 and Betsy Bryant '08 sailed a Tech, and Karl Johnson '05 sailed a Tech solo. In an eclectic mix of boaters on the Charles River, many were in full costumes of sport jackets and sundresses for the yachting event. Despite the relaxed atmosphere, Johnson commented, "We finished out on top, as expected."
Wish the sailors luck this weekend as they travel down to Yale to try for a qualifying spot for the Coed Nationals to top off the qualifying season.
