Winds Play Part In Regatta

A week-long break from classes is nearly guaranteed to lighten the mood of Harvard students. The fickle, Maryland winds that accompanied the Crimson sailing team’s during the three weekend regattas provided a welcome boost to the morale of the coed squad but only produced vexation for the women’s team.

“The wind was light,” junior Quincy Bock said, “and so were we.”

The coed squad gained some ground when it placed sixth at the Truxton Umsted Intersectional Regatta, but the women didn’t have quite the same success due to different conditions, as they placed 15th out of 18 teams at the St. Mary’s Women’s Intersectional Regatta. Meanwhile, back in Massachusetts, the freshmen held their own as the team took third at the Central Series BC Conference Regatta.

“We’d been practicing all week,” Bock said. “We were mentally and emotionally prepared for the regatta.”

TRUXTON UMSTED INTERSECTIONAL REGATTA

Though the coed squad is only in its third week of spring racing, the team was ready to knock off programs from different regions of the country.

“It’s probably the biggest regatta of the spring,” Bock said. “We were expecting there to be a lot of good teams.”

Among the tough competition, Harvard’s sailors were able to prove their own mettle. Junior John Stokes was the most successful skipper of the weekend, leading the B boat to a second place finish. Stokes’s boat excelled out of a field of twenty, as it snatched two first-place and four top-four finishes on Sunday while racing with Bock.

“It was lucky for us that we had just practiced and that it was nice, light and choppy,” Bock said.

Bock’s switch to the B boat proved to be a good strategic move, as both the A and B lineups posted better finishes on Sunday than they had the day before. Switching with Bock to captain Alan Palmer’s A Boat was junior Meghan Wareham, helping the boat come in sixth place. The A boat took two third-place finishes on Saturday but landed outside the top ten for the majority of the day’s races. The following day Palmer and Wareham made the top ten in nearly every race, and notched one first-place and five top-five finishes. Rounding out the coeds’ finishers were junior Teddy Himler, who took fourth in the C division, and classmate Colin Santangelo, who finished 13th in the D Division.

ST. MARY’S WOMEN’S INTERSECTIONAL REGATTA

Maryland’s gentle winds weren’t quite as kind to the women’s team as they had been to the coeds, as the squad took 15th place at St. Mary’s College.

“Overall it was a pretty disappointing weekend for us,” sophomore Emily Lambert said. “It was really light wind. The conditions were really not ideal for sailing.”

Lambert skippered her A boat to 14th place, the higher of the two women’s team finishes. But despite the team’s disappointment, the weekend was not without bright spots, as Lambert and freshman Alma Lafler took second in the weekend’s third race.

The B boat, skippered by captain Liz Powers and crewed by sophomore Marie Appel, also notched a second-place finish in the sixth race. Powers and Appel were able to improve over the course of the weekend, moving from 16th and 17th place finishes in the early races to top 15 finishes in later ones.

“We definitely learned a lot about racing in light air,” Lambert said, “And dealing with frustration and getting back into the race despite being frustrated.”

CENTRAL SERIES BC CONFERENCE REGATTA

While their upperclassmen counterparts were racing against schools from all corners of the country, the Crimson freshmen took on more regional foes in the Central Series hosted by Boston College. Only the host school and the University of Vermont were able to top the rookies, who placed third out of 11 schools.

Just like their upperclassmen teammates, the B boat led the way as Sam Millham and Jin Zang took third in the division with 42 points.

Their A boat teammates, Ryan Byrne and Sarah McCuskee, also fared well on the waters, notching fourth place in the A division and scoring two first-place finishes in the process.

—Staff writer Christina C. McClintock can be reached at ccmcclin@fas.harvard.edu.

This article has been revised to reflect the following corrections:

CORRECTIONS: March 23, 2010

An earlier version of the Mar. 23 sports article "Winds Play Part In Regatta" incorrectly called a regatta "Truxtun Olmstead." The correct name is Truxtun Umsted.

The article also misspelled the name of Ryan Byrne as Ryan Burne.