Crimson Earns Top Ranking

After a spring recess spent on the water, the Harvard sailing team can’t claim lack of practice—nor, now that it is ranked No. 1, can it claim underdog status.

The coed team reclaimed the top spot in the Sailing World national rankings released March 28, in the middle of a racing-heavy spring break week.

“It’s nice to get recognition,” sophomore Clay Johnson said. “We follow the rankings, and even though they’re arbitrary and don’t mean anything, it’s still nice to be number one.”

COED

Harvard missed first place by a single race in the Southern New England Team Race, held March 26-27 at Connecticut College.

Sailing Flying Juniors in steady winds, the Crimson finished 17-6 over two round robins and one six-team champion tournament in the 10-team field.

Yale won the regatta with a record of 18-5.

“We had a few mess-up races against Yale where we were winning 90 percent of the time and lost right before the finish line,” Johnson said.

Junior captain Vincent Porter, Johnson, and senior Genny Tulloch skippered the Crimson trifecta with junior Ruth Schlitz and sophomores Kristen Lynch and Emily Simon crewing.

Harvard kept six sailors on home waters for the Lynne Marchiando Team Race at MIT.

The Crimson finished fifth of 10 teams after fighting its way into the final round robin.

Harvard finished 4-1 in Sunday morning Silver Fleet competition to qualify, along with Dartmouth, for the six-team championship tournament.

The Crimson’s three FJs were skippered and crewed, respectively, by freshman Kyle Kovacs and junior captain Sloan Devlin, sophomore Matt Knowles and senior Laura Schubert, and sophomores Christina Dahlman and Sam Fink.

“In the Marchiando, we weren’t necessarily looking to qualify for finals,” Devlin said. “We’re strong for team racing.”

Harvard failed to capitalize on a home water advantage at the 76th Boston Dinghy Cup, which it co-hosted with BU and MIT on April 2-3, missing third place by five points.

“Truth be told, we should have won the regatta. It just was not one of our better weekends,” Johnson said. “You have to give credit to the crews for trying, but the skippers didn’t put it together.”

Sailors contended with particularly foul weather both days, with Saturday seeing driving rain early and dead calm later in the day and Sunday bringing in winds that varied from three to 20 knots.

“Saturday morning was pretty miserable. It was raining pretty hard, and when the rain shut off, so did the mind,” Schubert said. “The river was being a caricature of itself on Sunday.”

In an especially large regatta, 17 schools launched four divisions for 17 races.

Kovacs and Schubert won the C-division with a score of 78, 20 points ahead of division runner-up Brown. Kovacs and Schubert placed out of the top five in only four races and won four.

“We had some shining moments, like [Kovacs] winning his division as a freshman, [but] the other three skippers struggled more than we would have liked and were fairly inconsistent,” Devlin said.

Porter and Schlitz steered the A-division to seventh place.

The A-division won three races, but its final score was sabotaged by a withdrawal from the 11th race following the finish.

Johnson and Lynch took a consistent third in the B-division, winning three and finishing out of the top-10 only once.

In the D-division, Devlin and Dahlman took eighth.

“I think fourth is a solid finish for the BDCCC,” Schubert said. “We have another two months to practice, so our results are going to better.”

WOMEN’S

The No. 9 women’s team began the week on a sour note but stepped up to finish in the middle of the pack at Tufts on Saturday.

Over Easter weekend the team sailed in two one-day regattas at home—the Emily Wick Trophy on March 26 and, on the subsequent day, the Sloop Shrew Trophy.

The team struggled, finishing eighth of nine teams in the Emily Wick and seventh of seven in the Sloop Shrew.

Freshman Elyse Dolbec skippered the A-division, with sophomore Cassandra Niemi at crew.

Sophomore Marion Guillaume skippered and freshman Katie Beck crewed the B-division.

The team found smoother sailing with the Duplin Women’s Trophy at Tufts, and breezes held strong as the Crimson finished seventh of 13 teams over 10 races.

Senior Genny Tulloch skippered and sophomore Emily Simon crewed the A-division for the first five races, with junior Jessica Baker and senior Daphne Lyman assuming the roles for the second half of the races.

Harvard’s first boat took fifth in the division.

The B-division, skippered by Dolbec and crewed by Niemi, took seventh, and the College of Charleston won the regatta.

The Crimson’s results have lagged as skippers have been roped into co-ed racing, and the team is looking to the Dellenbaugh Women’s Trophy at Brown April 16-17 to reassert itself in preparation for national championships.

“Some of the women’s skippers have been sailing co-ed regattas. We definitely would like to get women’s back up to speed,” Devlin said.

“We’re looking toward to the Dellenbaugh to do that, sail our best people on A and B, and put people on notice before women’s qualifiers.”

—Staff Stewart C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.