Crimson Third in Tight Race

The Harvard sailing team continued to cogitate on how to optimize its surfeit of skippers, using another early-season team race regatta this weekend to tinke with its A-team lineup.

After knocking the ice off its gear with a regatta in Charleston last weekend, the No. 10 Crimson finished third in a competitive six-team field on Saturday at the Brown Team Race Invitational.

Harvard finished with a 10-5 record over the course of three round-robin tournaments, matching 420-Class dinghies against several of the top teams in New England—and, consequently, the nation.

“We were pretty excited about how we did,” sophomore Clay Johnson said. “The mistakes we made were recognizable and correctable.”

Competition was tight among the top teams, with Brown’s A-team finishing 11-4 for the regatta win. Boston College and Harvard tied at 10-5, but the Eagles won the tiebreaker by having beaten the Crimson in two of three match races. Tufts finished fourth with a 9-6 record.

“BC’s a very strong team. They have three senior skippers who have been working the program the last three years they’ve been on the team,” Johnson said. “The fact that we could tie BC was very promising.”

The Bears’ B-team and Connecticut College finished 3-12 and 2-13, respectively. Junior captain Vincent Porter sailed with junior Ruth Schlitz for all races, with Johnson, junior captain Sloan Devlin, and senior Genny Tulloch splitting time at skipper. Sophomores Kristen Lynch and Emily Simon swapped out at crew, while senior Laura Schubert crewed in every race as well.

Harvard sailed to a 3-2 finish in the first round robin, improved to 4-1 in the second and closed out with another 3-2 margin.

“I definitely think you can acknowledge that we got a lot better from the last weekend, but it’s still so early in the season to make judgments about how good we are,” Porter said.

Little separated wins from losses, especially in the first round robin, in which most races were decided by the final leg.

“I think one of the positives of the weekend was that a lot of our losses were so close,” Devlin said.

For some of the team’s sailors, the regatta was the first competition since the fall season, and for the team as a whole—as well as its competition—the regatta served as a competitive practice rather than as an accurate test of ability.

“This was kind of a practice run for the season, but at the same time we took it pretty seriously,” Johnson said. “Everyone was trying new stuff.”

Sailing was sunny and cold on Saturday and a two-day regatta had been planned, but forecasts of inclement weather prompted race organizers to cancel racing on Sunday.

“I think a lot of the team looked at [the regatta] as practice. We’re definitely taking this seriously, but it’s also a learning experience by which we can see how everybody’s starting the season. We would have liked to have had another day of racing from the standpoint of practice this season,” Devlin said.

The regatta allowed the Crimson to work on determining which three skippers will sail as its A-team for the more critical team races to follow later in the season. Five skippers—the four who sailed at Brown as well as freshman Kyle Kovacs, who skippered the previous weekend in Charleston—are contending for the available slots.

“Right now, it’s early in the season and it’s unclear who will sail the third slot. We’re giving everyone the chance to sail, especially early in the season when there’s not that much at stake,” Schlitz said.

Johnson relayed that the team’s coaches want to have a lineup in place by the weekend of March 26-27. While Porter and Johnson are likely to skipper two of the team racing dinghies, the determination will be made based on performance in practice as well as regattas.

“To an extent there’s pressure to be on the A-team. It’s great. We can put any of [the skippers] in and know there’s going to be a great effort,” Johnson said. “Practice is going to be really competitive.”

And the decision will be made in time for the meat of the team’s season. Harvard will see serious intersectional competition at Truxton Umstead, a fleet racing regatta at Navy March 19-20 and at Tufts’ Friis Trophy Team Race April 9-10.

“We’re looking for big things in NEISA [the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association] in the future,” Johnson said.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.