Repeat Eludes Coed Sailors, Women Take Second

Talk about a tough act to follow.

A year removed from a season that featured not one, but two outright national championships—in both team racing and coed dinghy competition—Harvard’s coed sailors were faced in 2003-2004 with the admirable task of repeating excellence.

But despite a stout résumé of performances, the Crimson sailors ultimately came up short in their dual title defense.

The Henry Morss trophy, awarded to the winner of the ICSA/GILL NA Dinghy Championships, went instead to Hawaii—the team the Crimson outpaced to win last year—while St. Mary’s took top honors in team racing.

In both events, the once-No. 1 Crimson had to settle for a disappointing sixth-place finish.

But while the team as a whole could not repeat as the uncontested best in the country this season, two Harvard sailors extraordinarily garnered the equivalent individual accolades.

Co-captain Cardwell Potts was named the ICSA College Sailor of the Year, while sophomore Genny Tulloch won Quantum Collegiate Woman Sailor of the Year, marking a Crimson sweep of the two top honors.

Potts was also named an All-American Coed Skipper along with sophomore Vincent Porter, who notably won the ICSA/Vanguard Singlehanded Championships in November. Freshman standout Clay Johnson was an Honorable Mention, and took third in that same event.

Co-captain Laura Schubert, Potts’ usual partner in the A Division, was a Crew All-American.

The team also boasts wins at the United States Merchant Marine Academy, the New England Sloop Championships and the 69th Boston Dinghy Cup, a few names in an imposing row of top finishes this year. Harvard also captured the prestigious 55th Fowle Trophy in winning the New England Team Racing Championships.

“I sailed every day with some of the best sailors in the country,” Johnson said of the season. “This team is one of the best teams at Harvard, and it’s great to be a part of it.”

WOMEN

After powering to titles at the New England Championships and the Team Racing Championship and a No. 1 national ranking by mid-May, the women’s sailing season found itself in an unfamiliar final spot on May 26.

Just weeks before, the Crimson had used nature’s abundance—“Our strong suit is strong winds,” Tulloch said—to its advantage, conquering the northeast’s best. But in the North American Women’s Championships in picturesque Cascade Locks, Ore., Harvard appeared cursed.

Known for a range of wind-whipped mountains surrounding its blustery gorge, Cascade Locks instead threw the Crimson for a loop with some bizarre conditions. Fighting a stifling lack of breeze and beastly currents, Harvard finished the National Championships’ first day in a disappointing 12th place.

“It’s been against all our expectations,” Tulloch said after the first day of racing. “We were ready for something else.”

Harvard coach Mike O’Connor attributed the Crimson’s struggles to “the fact that we’re still in finals, we had to fly here late, we’re pretty tired, and we weren’t quite on our game.”

“Yesterday [with] the conditions here in the gorge,” he added, “the thing we’re not used to is the current.”

That would all change.

Behind several late, strong performances—especially by B Division entries Sloan Devlin and Mallory Greimann—the Crimson swelled into sixth place on the second day of competition, then second place on the third and final day. Devlin would go on to be recognized as an All-American.

Neither the sharp current nor the lack of wind changed—but women’s sailing’s fortunes did.

Only Yale, which finished first with 154 points, held off the Crimson’s late charge. Harvard finished Nationals with 175 points.

—Staff writer Alex McPhillips can be reached at rmcphill@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Pablo S. Torre can be reached at torre@fas.harvard.edu.