Harvard Sailors Have Frustrating Weekend; 'Cliffe Takes New England Championships

Harvard's sailing team, spread thin by three major regattas, suffered a disappointing weekend, but its Radcliffe counterpart, now ranked number one in New England, qualified for the Nationals in June.

The Radcliffe sailors won the Jerry Reed Trophy, symbolic of the New England championship with a first place total of 46 points. MIT took second with 68, and Newton College finished in third with 75 points.

Sailing well despite flukey conditions, Division A skipper Barbie Grant, with Beth Goddard as crew, took 5 firsts in the 12 race series, and ran away with top-boat honors with only 27 points. In Division B, Janice Stroud, with Kathy Angell as crew, did even better, capturing 7 firsts and never finishing worse than third. In the twelfth race Angell took over as skipper and contributed a first.

As a result of their decisive win over MIT, the Crimson will be a favorite in the nationals. Last year the Engineers took the title, breaking a three year Radcliffe winning streak. 1972 will mark only the fifth time the women's nationals have been held.

Harvard's sailing team put its main emphasis on the Kennedy Cup, the national intercollegiate yawl championship at the Naval Academy, but the Crimson could only manage eighth place out of the 11-team field. Harvard did, however, manage to beat three West Coast entries, who had come East as favorites.

Harvard's big-boat expert, Andy Burnes, skippered the Crimson entry with co-captain George Putnam serving as tactician and Rick White as navigator. John Bowers, Rud Istvan, Oivind Lorentzen, Dave Brownlee, and Dave Tew rounded out the crew.

The Crimson also had a frustrating weekend at Penn, where Princeton took the Ivy League championship with Penn second and Harvard third. Mismanagement prevented the completion of one of the two round robins and made the Crimson's slow start crucial.

In the final regatta of the weekend, the sailors could manage only a disappointing fifth in the Friis Trophy at Tufts, an event Harvard had dominated in the past.