For the third year in a row, the Yale sailors raced to victory in the Ivy Championships over the weekend.
The No. 4 Bulldogs won the Mosbacher Trophy and the Owen Trophy, both of which were hosted by Brown in Providence. The Mosbacher Trophy goes to the Ivy school with the highest-ranked team, and the Owen Trophy is awarded to the team that wins the weekend’s regatta.
“Winning Ivies early on in the season is very motivating,” women’s captain Blair Belling ’11 said. “We looking forward to the rest of our competitions.”
In other parts of New England, the coed team also finished fifth at the Team Race B Level and second at the Southern Series Two event hosted at Salve Regina in Newport. The women’s team took first place at the Duplin Trophy Team Race in Winchester, Mass.
At the Edgewood Yacht Club in Providence, Saturday’s Ivy Championship opened slowly. Teams were only able to race one set per division in light winds before a 2-hour postponement was called. Another set was raced in the afternoon.
In the A divison, Thomas Barrows ’10 and Belling won half of their four races. In the B division, Joseph Morris ’12 and Marla Menninger ’10 also won two of their heats.
With stronger winds on Sunday, the Bulldogs rearranged their boats to compete with the 12–16 knot breeze. Barrows and Menninger sailed together in the A division, and Morris captained for the B division as Mike Hession ’10 and Rafael Fernandez ’13 switched off as crew. Brown continued to trail the Elis throughout the day.
“It was definitely hard for us because they were at home,” Barrows said of Brown. “You could tell they were trying to make a comeback, but their fleet wasn’t as deep as ours.”
Though Brown was close at the Bulldogs’ heels throughout the regatta, the Elis pulled off a win with 70 points, 18 ahead of the Bears. It was a solid victory in one of Yale’s only fleet-style races of the semester.
“It was a lot of fun,” Morris said. “It’s much easier to transition to fleet racing from team races. There is just a much different mindset to team racing.”
Getting into this mindset was new to the women’s team, yet they proved equally as successful at the Duplin Trophy, their only team race of the season.
“Women’s team racing is very new,” Belling said. “It’s pretty much just starting out. The fact that our girls can win the regatta when it’s not really part of the sport yet is very impressive.”
The regatta, hosted by Tufts, is the squad’s only regatta of the season with a team-race format. It took the better part of Saturday morning for the Elis to become used to handling a different class of boat, which sailors have dubbed “larks on steroids.” At most collegiate events, they sail in 420s or FJs.
The Larks are designed to take advantage of the lightest winds, and the Tufts team has further modified the sails to capture even more breeze.
Saturday had less wind than even the well-adjusted larks could handle, and a postponement lasted for an hour. Afterward, the racing committee officiated eight races during the day, all of which were plagued by light, constantly changing winds.
Sunday saw relatively heavy winds for the sailors.
Sarah Lihan ’10, Rebecca Jackson ’10, Elizabeth Brim ’11, Margot Benedict ’12, Claire Dennis ’13, Heather May ’13 and Grace Zimmerly ’13 finished 12–3 for the first two days and earned a place in the four-team championship round.
The Elis had an advantage over most of the fleet because Lihan has been skippering for the coed team in its team races this season.
“There are very few women skippers in coed team racing,” Belling said. “The fact that Sarah has been doing a lot is very impressive. She deserves a lot of credit for that.”
In the final race of the regatta, Yale faced Boston College. The Eagles were ahead until one of their boats spun out of control and hit on the Elis’ crafts, erasing BC’s lead over the Bulldogs. The Elis then charged ahead and stole the regatta with a record of 14–4.
In Newport, R.I., the Elis were also successful at the Salve Regina Southern Series Two Event. Stephanie Schuyler ’12 and Genoa Warner ’12 finished fifth in the A division, and Emily Billing ’13 and Jared Shenson ’12 powered through the B division competition to take the win. Each boat won three races apiece over the course of the two days. (Shenson is a production and design editor for the News.)
To add further excitement to a busy weekend, Hession, John Vrolyk ’10, Andrew Kurzrok ’11, Isabel Elliman ’12, Senem Cilingiroglu ’13 and Zimmerly took fifth in the Team Race B Level at Roger Williams on Saturday.
This coming Saturday, the coed Elis will team-race at the Southern New England Team Race Intersectional, hosted by Connecticut College and the U.S.C.G. Academy in New London, Conn. The women’s team will return to fleet racing at the 24th Dellenbaugh Trophy at Brown.
CORRECTION: March 31, 2010
A previous version of this article misstated the finish of Genoa Warner ’12 and Stephanie Schuyler ’12 in the A division of the Salve Regina Southern Series Two Event. The pair finished in fourth, not fifth.