Sailing Triumphs at Tufts, B Team Struggles at Yale

On a competition-filled weekend for the Harvard coed sailing team, the Crimson captured first place in the Friis Trophy Competition at Tufts, but finished a disappointing eighth in the Ted Ferrarone Team Race at Yale.

To accommodate the two competitions at different sites, Harvard split into an A and a B team, with the more experienced A team staying close to home at Tufts and the less experienced B team competing at Yale.

Harvard sent three boats to the team race at Tufts and came away with an impressive 13-2 win, including a 9-0 sweep of all the Saturday races. The Crimson finished ahead of local rivals Dartmouth and Tufts and continued a successful spring streak that has seen it finish in the top two places in each of its competitions this year.

“It’s a great feeling because this is the last [team] race before the New England Championships,” senior Sean Doyle said. “It’s important to get used to sailing against these teams.”

Racing in the first boat for Harvard were Doyle and junior co-captain Michelle Yu, while junior co-captain Clay Bischoff and classmate Lema Kikiuchi comprised the second boat and sophomore Cardwell Potts and senior Laura Knoll commanded the third dinghy.

The Crimson’s success in winning the Friis Trophy did not carry over to New Haven, where the B boats finished near the bottom of the standings.

While that result was disappointing, Harvard did send its fastest boats to Tufts, leaving those at Yale to face the tough, wavy conditions of the open water of Long Island Sound. Harvard was also competing in Yale’s 420 boats, which handle quite differently than the Larks—closed water boats that the Crimson usually employs.

“It does matter that we ran different boats than we usually sail,” senior Rehan Gubin said.

But the Crimson was still satisfied with its overall performance at Yale.

“We beat the hard teams we needed to beat but we made a few costly mistakes in some of the easier races,” junior Dan Litchfield said in an e-mail.

Despite the B team’s struggles, the decision to race two teams of boats this weekend was important, according to Doyle.

“It shows the depth of our team,” he said. “It’s important to send the B team to these regattas. They’re who we practice against, and how we get better.”

The experience of running more than one team at a time will serve Harvard well next weekend, when it has six different races on the books, including the Moody at URI, the BU Trophy and the Admiral’s Cup at Kingspoint. The heavy schedule is designed to help the Crimson prepare for the start of nationals qualifying season at the end of April and beginning of May.