The Dartmouth sailing team competed in the New England Team Race Championship at Harvard University this weekend, finishing sixth out of 12 teams, the best the program has done in the past 5 years.
Team members competing in the races included Matt Wefer '14, Molly Wilson '13, Scott Houck '15, Avery Plough '14, Deirdre Lambert '15, Abigail Rohman '16, Ian Storck '15 and Hope Wilson '16. Lambert earned the first team skipper award as well as the New England Conference skipper of the year award last week.
"I thought we competed pretty well," Houck said. "We can compete with any of those teams on any given day. We just had a tough few losses that set us back in the final round, but I feel like we came a long way as a team."
The round robin-style race divided the 12 contenders into groups of six for the first round of competition and Dartmouth placed sixth, but needed to finish fourth or higher to earn a berth in team nationals.
"We knew it was going to be a very tough regatta because there were no easy races to be won," Wefer said. "We fought really hard and gave it our best shot. We won some, we lost some, and we were happy to make it to the final six, which we had not done in quite a few years."
While the sailing team will not compete in the team portion of nationals, some members will compete in the fleet racing portion.
"We did qualify last weekend for the fleet race national championships, which is a discipline that is more focused on individual results within your division," Houck said. "You accumulate multiple results in races to see if you move on, whereas team racing is three boats versus three boats competing against each other, where you either win or lose that race to move on."
Nationals will begin on May 25 in Florida. The team has taken first in 10 competitions this season, putting the Big Green competitors in a good spot looking to nationals.
"We have been to nationals before, so we know how to prepare for it," Wefer said. "We are just going to rely on our training, get as much time on the water as we can and we will just give it our best shot in a few weeks."
