Women Sailors Conclude Successful Fall Season

While thousands of Harvard students cheered lustily last weekend at the numerous Princeton-Harvard encounters here in Cambridge, one of Harvard's most outstanding and successful teams--the women's sailing squad--capped off a stellar season in relative obscurity by handily winning the Victorian Coffee Urn Regatta in the Charles River Basin.

The regatta--which is considered the highlight of the fall racing season--was won by a hefty 24 points through the superior sailing efforts of junior captain Rony Sebok (crew Deirdre Wilde, who competed in the A Division, and senior Meredith Stelling (crew Liz Miller), who sailed in the B division.

The championship consists of 18 races in each division over the two days. At the end of the first day, Sebok and Stelling had opened up a nine point lead over the tough Boston University team, and they came back the next morning to widen the gap to 24 points and eventually take first place among the ten competing colleges.

Coach Mike Horn was ebullient about the turnaround made by the squad--last year they failed to win a single regatta, whereas this year they captured four out of five of the championship regattas they entered. "Without a question this is the best season the team has had in ten years," he states emphatically, adding, "This Radcliffe team is the finest team in all of New England right now."

The small squad of about ten members had its first success in the Man-Labs Regatta at MIT in mid-September where they took first place, and they did not stop winning afterwards. Consecutive victories included the Captain's Cup Regatta at Tufts, the New England Women's Team Racing Championship and the President' Trophy. The team also competed in the Intersectional Regatta at Yale in the beginning of October and took fourth place because, as Horne avers, "Yale is a very strange place to sail. It's also exceedingly difficult to win every single regatta in a season."

Although just two sailors are usually selected every week to participate in the weekend regattas, Harvard's depth this season has enabled them to rotate the skippering duties in the B division among talented competitors like junior Rachel Lampert, sophomore Gail Ablow, junior Katie Jennings, and Stelling--a factor which sets them apart from the other squads. Sebok feels that this depth has also brought a greater level of experience and aggressiveness to the team, which is reflected favorably in races.

Sebok also says that Harvard's reputation for having more brains than the other colleges has not hurt race outcomes. "I really believe that our team things better, and has smarter strategy and race tactics than other teams," she says.

Although the fall season is now officially over, the team is already planning ahead to the spring regattas, which will start around spring break. If the squad can finish among the top three at the New England Women's Championships, they will earn a long-awaited spot in the National Intercollegiate Women's Dinghy Championships, which will be held somewhere in the northwest in mid-June. Radcliffe has not competed in the event since 1976.

Both Horne and Sebok are optimistic about the team's chances of attending the championship, which Radcliffe won nine times in the first ten years of its existence. "It looks really good for us," the team captain says, and Horne adds rosily, "If they sail next spring the way they did this fall, then Harvard will be unbeatable."