The Dartmouth sailing team had good and bad finishes this weekend, taking third place at the Women's Stu Nelson Regatta and sixth place at the Central Series 6, while finishing 10th at the Rudolph Oberg Trophy and 17th at the Sherman Hoyt Trophy.
The Stu Nelson was hosted by Connecticut College in New London, Conn., and featured 18 women's sailing squads from across New England.
Kendall Reiley '09 and Kathy Oprea '10 cruised to a fourth-place finish in Division A, while Becca Dellenbaugh '10, Sarah Johnston '09 and Steph Gagnon '10 pulled through with an eighth-place finish in Division B. Dellenbaugh was the skipper for each Division B race with Gagnon crewing for races one through eight and Johnston crewing the final two races.
"We're really psyched about how well this weekend went," Reiley said. "We did very well in the strong breeze on Saturday and carried enough momentum into much more difficult conditions on Sunday. We finally showed the rest of New England how strong of a team we are."
The efforts of the sailors brought the Big Green team to a third-place standing overall, while Boston College captured first place, winning both Division A and B and finishing 59 points ahead of second place Yale and 70 points ahead of Dartmouth.
The third-place finish cemented Dartmouth's qualification for the Women's Atlantic Coast Championships, which will be held at Georgetown University Saturday and Sunday, Nov. 15 and 16.
"We held off a bunch of schools and qualified for the Atlantic Coast Champs in three weeks," Reiley said. "There are still three more spots to qualify next weekend, but we're psyched to have it done early."
On the Charles River, at the Central Series Six Regatta, hosted by Boston College, Charlie Knape '10 and Heidi Heller '10 sailed to a sixth-place finish out of 18 teams in Division A, while newcomers Tim Scanlon '12 and Lillian Wilson '12 ended the Division B event in seventh place. The finishes were good enough for sixth, but the Big Green expected better.
"We didn't do as well as we'd hoped, but we kind of beat ourselves," Knape said. "Basically we kept getting ourselves in the position to do really well, and then we'd make mistakes."
The Dartmouth sailors were a mere three points behind fifth-placed Roger Williams University. The University of Rhode Island tallied 76 points overall, clinching the first-place spot.
Knape attributed the team's performance to shifty gusts at the venue.
"The first day we had tons of wind -- almost too much -- which made for fast and exciting races that were mostly about avoiding mistakes," Knape said. "The second day had less wind, which was more helpful for tactics and speed."
Nearby at the Rudolph Oberg Trophy race hosted by Northeastern and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Bernie Roesler '12 and Courtney Gerwin '12 finished in 12th place out of the 17 teams competing in the Division A race. Matty Cohen '10 and Christina Clark '10 finished in ninth place in Division B and Ben Bier '10 and Tess Korndorf '10's eighth-place standing at the end of the Division C race brought Dartmouth to 10th out of 17.
Roger Williams University secured the first-place spot, 50 points ahead of second-place URI.
At Brown University's Sherman Hoyt Trophy, Sam Williams '12 sailed with three different teammates -- Anne Megargel '09, Peter Hughes '11 and Phil Woram '10 -- over the course of the regatta, but the best finish the team had in Division A was seventh place in the first race of the event.The team finished in 14th place in Division A, while Ed Jude Glackin '11 and Sarah Freihofer '10 struggled to a 17th-place finish in the Division B competition.
Dartmouth's squad finished in 17th out of 18, with Roger Williams again claiming the top spot.
The Big Green sailing squad will look to redeem itself this upcoming weekend, as the women sail at the Victorian Coffee Urn Regatta, hosted by Harvard. The coed squad is set to sail in the Erwin Schell Trophy, hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Nickerson Trophy, hosted by the Massachusetts Maritime Academy.
