It was a weekend that ended well. After traveling across the northeast and dividing their energies to compete in three different regattas, Yale’s sailing team concluded two full days of racing by bringing home several top finishes.
Most notably, women’s team captain Jane Macky ’09 captured first place at the NE Singlehanded Championships, a Women’s Nationals qualifying event, at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. In coed competition, Thomas Barrows ’10 and Abigail Coplin ’09 placed second in the A Division of the 25th Hood Trophy hosted by Tufts in Boston. The team also competed at the New England Sloop Championships at Brown.
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Macky’s win, with a two-day total of 96 points, capped off the women’s three top-10 finishes on the water at Roger Williams, with Sarah Lihan ’10 taking sixth with 151 points and Kate Hagemann ’09 placing 10th with 191 points. The Singlehanded Championships were different from regular regattas in that each skipper sailed alone in 18 races, and the scores from all the races were combined to determine overall rankings.
“Because there were so many races, it was just perseverance,” Macky said. “It was keeping your mind together, getting top average scores. It was a pretty long and exhausting regatta.”
The women’s strong showing comes in the wake of a solid second-place finish the previous weekend at the Mrs. Hurst Bowl at Dartmouth.
The coed team’s performance was on par with the women’s. Blown by the winds of victory, the coed team followed up its clinch of the Hatch Brown Trophy the week before in Boston with a third-place finish overall at Tufts’ Hood Trophy this weekend, despite sailing in unfamiliar waters.
“It was a really tricky place to sail, and we were in a different type of boat than we were used to, so that made it kind of hard,” Barrows said. “We started out pretty strong, but sort of faded towards the end.”
Barrows’ and Coplin’s 114 points, along with a sixth-place, 133-point race by John Kempton ’10 and Marla Menninger ’10 in the B Division, combined to let Yale decisively dominate the Ivies. Yale’s 247 point total was just behind Tufts’ winning 199 points and Boston College’s runner-up total of 237 points, while Harvard trailed in fourth with 286 points.
Although the team is happy with its top-three finish, the sailors still see room for improvement.
“We are working on getting good starts every time and not letting others mess you up,” Menninger said. “The regatta is a really easy place to get frustrated.”
The Elis were also represented at the New England Sloop Championships, where Zach Brown ’08, Emmet Smith ’09 and Michael Hession ’10 skippered their boat into eighth place with 58 points.
The team is gearing up for yet another busy weekend of sailing. The women will compete in the Regis Bowl at Boston University this weekend while the coed team cruises into the Danmark Trophy hosted by Coast Guard, the Smith Trophy at MIT and the Southern Series II at home.
“Next weekend, it would be nice to win,” Barrows said. “We don’t expect to, but that’s our goal.”