Strong Finishes for No. 1 Sailing in Weekend Events

On the fall season’s second-to-last multi-regatta weekend for the No. 1 Harvard co-ed sailing team, the Crimson came just short of crowning a national champion or two, got some of its youngest sailors a first taste of the national stage, and narrowly missed earning a key home regatta win on the Charles.

Though no wins came of the weekend, a strong performance was a good sign for a Harvard team that wishes to retain its newly acquired No. 1 ranking as the fall finish line nears.



ICSA VANGUARD SINGLEHANDED CHAMPIONSHIP

Roger Williams played host to the three-day Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association’s Foster Trophy, the national championship for the singlehanded competitors. Light conditions on Sunday condensed the event down to two days, with each participant racing a total of 12 times. The Crimson qualified both senior captain Clay Johnson and junior Kyle Kovacs for the event, and Johnson’s 77 points helped him finish third in his final singlehanded championship, while Kovacs was right behind in fourth place with 79 points. Stanford’s Emery Wager won the event with a 61-point total, and Trevor Moore of Hobart took second place with 71 points. Johnson, who took second at the same event the past two years and third as a freshman, will finish his illustrious career without an individual national championship.

“I was a little disappointed, because I wanted to continue to improve,” Johnson said. “I had been training pretty hard with the coaches, both Kyle and I trained pretty hard. I wanted to win overall.”



MIT NO RINGER INVITE

Twenty teams traveled to MIT on Saturday for the No Ringer Invite, a low-stress event that saw the peculiar pairing of Harvard and Wellesley as a dual-team. The combination finished in seventh place overall, with Wellesley’s Kira Treibergs and Cordellia Chansler steering A-division to a seventh place finish. In B-division, the Crimson’s freshman tandem of skipper James Fish and crew Ali Beyer earned Harvard a No. 9 finish. The University of Vermont won the event, while the Coast Guard Academy and Dalhousie University rounded out the top three.



HORN TROPHY

The Charles River was the site of the Horn Trophy, a 28-race regatta featuring ten schools and four divisions of races on Saturday and Sunday. While Boston College ran away with the event, Harvard sailed in comfortably at No. 2, followed by Tufts, the Coast Guard Academy, and the University of New Hampshire.

In A-division, sophomore skipper Roberta Steele and junior crew Elyse Dolbec did most of the work in helping the Crimson earn a No. 4 finish, while sophomore Lauren Brants also crewed one race. Sophomore skipper Jon Garrity and senior crew Ashley Nathanson guided B-division to a second place finish, while both C and D-divisions saw four sailors each. Sophomore skipper Megan Watson, senior crew Cassandra Niemi, senior skipper Marion Guillaume, and sophomore Kerry-Anne Bradford finished in second in C-division, as sophomore Andrew Flynn, Brants, senior Robby McIntosh, and sophomore Margaret Wang earned D-division a No. 6 nod.

Boston College’s final point tally was 84, compared to a Crimson total of 113. Tufts had 139, while CGA and New Hampshire had 149 and 163, respectively.

Though he didn’t spend his weekend at a team event, Johnson was confident about Harvard’s performance heading into the offseason.

“We’re really showing collegiate sailing that we’re here,” he said of the team overall. “We’re going to be really solid for the spring.”



ATLANTIC COAST FRESHMAN CHAMPIONSHIP

Four first-years traveled to Providence, R.I., where Brown was host to the Atlantic Coast Freshman Championships. Thirteen schools sent representatives to the regatta, and the Crimson finished squarely in the middle at No. 7.

Skipper Drew Robb and crew Hyunjin Kim sailed in a tight A-division field and finished No. 4, while a more difficult time was had for skipper Liz Powers and crew Michelle Konstadt in B-division. That pair took No. 12, though just ten points separated Harvard and the five teams that finished ahead of the Crimson.

Boston College won the event, followed by Yale, Tufts, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Roger Williams.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.