Sailing Shows Improvement Over Weekend

The Harvard sailing team split up along the Charles River, as the Crimson competed in three regattas in the Boston area. Harvard picked up a sixth place finish at the 45th Women’s President’s Trophy Intersectional, hosted by neighboring Boston University. The Crimson also finished in sixth at the Friis and Marchiando Trophies, held at MIT. Wrapping up its weekend schedule, Harvard took fourth as it hosted the Central Series Three Regatta.

“We’re pleased that the team continues to improve,” head coach Michael O’Connor said. “In the team racing regatta at MIT, we qualified for the gold round, and we were happy with that. We were not able to qualify for the final four, which was sort of our next goal. But we’re getting closer and closer to the top teams with our very young team.”

It was the fourth straight weekend of competition for the Crimson. The team looked to capitalize on its success from last weekend, when Harvard notched a victory at the Ted Ferrarone Team Race.

“Overall, the results were relatively good [for this weekend],” sophomore Gram Slattery said. “I think we all showed a good amount of improvement from where we were just a few weeks ago. But [the results] also showed there’s work to be done.”

The Crimson went 6-8 at the intersectional regatta hosted by the Engineers, good for a sixth place showing in the 15-team field. Harvard opened the regatta with 5-2 records in both Round Robin events, advancing to the gold round. The Crimson posted victories against Boston College, MIT, Navy, and Michigan in both rounds. Harvard again finished with a 5-2 record in the first gold stage, but faltered to a 3-4 record in the second round.

“[It was] a very difficult team race,” Slattery said. “The first day, our communication was extremely good. We managed to knock off Boston College every time we faced them, and they’re ranked third or fourth in the country right now. The next day, we didn’t do quite as well. We made some silly errors. It’s about minimizing errors more than it is making plays, and unfortunately we just made a few too many errors.”

Yale took home first place with a 13-4 record on the weekend, edging out Boston College for the win. Stanford rounded out the top three at the event.

At the Central Series Three Regatta, Harvard posted 101 points to edge Brown University in a tiebreaker for fourth place. In the A division, juniors Ames Lyman and Jacquelyn Cooley notched one victory along with three second-place finishes and ended up with a total of 51 points. Senior Jinyan Zang and freshman Matthew Clarida, who is also a Crimson business editor, posted a second-place finish in one of their races en route their 50 point total.

Boston College came in first with a 62 point total, while Connecticut College picked up 73 points to finish in second. The MIT squad came in third with 93 points.

In the third and final regatta of the weekend, the Crimson’s 187-point total at the BU President’s Trophy just beat out Boston College for sixth place. In the A division races, juniors Morgan Russom and Caitlin Watson posted an 85-point total, while sophomore Asleigh Inglis and freshman Sophie Bermudez put up 102 points in the B division.

Yale won the regatta by a wide margin. The Bulldogs’ 66-point total was almost half that of second place finisher Tufts, which ended with 128 points. Roger Williams came in third, amassing 160 points on the weekend.

This weekend’s results mark the continuation of an upward trend for the Crimson. The team has steadily been on the rise the past few weeks, as the young squad gains experience from each weekend of competition.

“I think, over the course of the year, we came in with no one [who] could really perform at the intersectional level. It was really a struggle-fest,” Slattery said. “Now I think there are a bunch of skippers and crews that have really gotten a lot of confidence and have gotten a lot of good results too. At the beginning of the year, it was very intimidating. No one had a lot of experience at this level. We’ve gotten to the point where we know we can compete.”

Harvard looks ahead to another weekend full of competition, as the team will split up to tackle four regattas.

“We certainly had our struggles throughout the fall, but we continued to work at it,” O’Connor said. “We’ve done better working on our skipper-crew combinations in the spring. Everyone’s hard work is starting to show.”

—Staff writer Brenna R. Nelsen can be reached at brennanelsen@college.harvard.edu. Follow her on Twitter at @CrimsonBRN.