Sailing Earns Postseason Berth

For the Harvard women’s sailing team, this weekend brought a do-or-die situation. Finish in the top half of the field at the Reed Trophy, and the Crimson would be guaranteed a spot in the postseason. Finish outside the top seven, and the season would be done.

But Harvard surpassed even its own expectation, finishing second and earning a berth in the ICSA Women’s National Championship.

“Our main goal was just to qualify for semifinals,” sophomore skipper Emily Lambert said. “So it was really exciting that we were able to go above and beyond our goal and qualify directly for nationals.”

The co-eds finished near the top of the pack in their final tune-up before next weekend’s national qualifier regatta, placing sixth out of 18 teams at the Thompson Trophy.

REED TROPHY

It came down to the last race, but the Crimson women stepped it up at the right time, beating Boston College to the finish line in both divisions in the Reed Trophy’s 10th race.

Harvard finished the regatta, hosted by Brown, in second place, just three points ahead of the Eagles, to grab the second and final automatic bid to nationals.

“The weekend went really well overall,” Lambert said. “This was the one chance we had for women’s to qualify for nationals.”

The consistent performance of Lambert and sophomore crew Alex Jumper in the A division propelled the Crimson to take second in the event for the second-straight year.

Though the pair didn’t win a race all weekend, the sophomores placed outside the top four just once—a ninth-place finish in Saturday’s final race.

“We were really excited by it,” Lambert said. “We were just trying to in every race make sure that we worked as hard as we can to minimize the number of points we got, and luckily we were able to be really consistent. It was something we’d struggled with in the past, so it was nice to iron it out this weekend.”

In the B division, senior Liz Powers and sophomore Marie Appel placed in the top three in five of the 10 races, including two wins. The pair finished fifth in the division.

“They sailed really well, we were really psyched,” Lambert said. “We’re just really pleased with it. It was a good team effort.”

At the regatta’s end, the quartet took home not only an automatic trip to nationals—bypassing the semifinal round—but some individual hardware as well.

Jumper and Appel were named to the NEISA First Team as crews, while Powers and Lambert made the second team as skippers. Powers was also honored with the league’s Sportsman of the Year prize.

THOMPSON TROPHY

Despite finishing in the top third of the field, the co-ed team walked away from the Thompson Trophy, hosted by the Coast Guard Academy, feeling disappointed.

“In my mind, it was a pretty mediocre performance,” junior crew Meghan Wareham said. “But I was happy that we did have some good races. There was good competition there. It was good to sail against some people outside of New England after the New England Championships last weekend.”

Wareham and junior skipper Alan Palmer racked up three second-place finishes through the 13-race regatta, coming in sixth in the A division.

“We had some very good races, but a lot of bad ones too,” Wareham said. “It was definitely tough conditions, but you can’t blame that. We had some major mess-ups at the start—we need to work on that this weekend at semifinals.”

Junior John Stokes skippered the B division boat, with senior Michelle Konstadt and junior Quincy Bock splitting time at crew.

The boat finished in the top six six times on the weekend, placing fifth overall.

But the co-eds focus lies squarely on this weekend’s opportunity to qualify for next month’s national championship regatta.

“What we need is to put in two solid performances this weekend on both days, keep it consistent,” Wareham said. “We don’t have to be winning races to qualify, but that would be nice.”

PRIDDY TROPHY

While the upperclassmen were sailing in the weekend’s big intersectionals, a pair of rookies stayed close to home, taking second place in the all-freshman Priddy Trophy, hosted by Mass Maritime.

Ryan Byrne and Alma Lafler finished second in a 14-team field, beating out third-place Brown by three points. Vermont won the regatta easily, amassing 49 points through 14 races.

Skipper Byrne and crew Lafler won three races, finishing as runners-up twice.

BU TROPHY

Sparked by a second-place finish in the A division, Harvard took seventh at the BU Trophy.

Junior skipper Colin Santangelo and sophomore crew William White, who is also a Crimson news editor, won two of the four races to finish four points behind A-division leader Vermont.

Freshman skipper Sam Millham and sophomore crew Caroline Lowe did not have as much success in the B division, finishing 10th.

NORTHEASTERN TECH INVITE

A quartet of sailors spent Saturday on the Charles, taking fourth in the local-level Northeastern Tech Invite.

Senior skipper Ali Beyer and sophomore crew Grant Wonders took seventh in the A division, while the freshman duo of skipper Nick Waldo and crew Nicholas Gordon took third in the B division.

—Staff writer Max N. Brondfield contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.