Harvard Earns Top-Five Finishes

With spring break ahead and a chance to practice in Charleston, S.C., the site of this year’s national championships, the No. 1 Harvard co-ed sailing team prefaced its practice on Southern waters with a busy weekend in the northeast, competing in a total of five events.

SOUTHERN NEW ENGLAND TEAM RACE

The Crimson nearly notched a first-place finish in the two-day regatta at the United States Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., held March 25 and 26. The six-team field saw each school race a total of 16 times, and after the action was completed, Harvard found itself tied for the lead with Yale. In the ensuing sail-off, the Bulldogs took the top spot; the Crimson finished second, followed by Tufts, Boston College, Brown, and Dartmouth.

“The races we did lose were all learning experiences,” junior skipper Clay Johnson said. He was joined by crew Emily Simon, as well as co-captain Vincent Porter and crew Ruth Schlitz. Also sailing were sophomores Kyle Kovacs and Elyse Dolbec, who served as skipper and crew, respectively.

“All the top teams in the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association (NEISA) were there, and it was good to make a statement as a top team in NEISA,” Johnson added.

WOMEN’S SLOOP SHREW TROPHY

Harvard sent four of its sailors to Boston College as its No. 7 women’s team earned a fourth-place finish at the Women’s Sloop Shrew Trophy on Sunday. In the A division, senior skipper Jessica Baker and freshman crew Lauren Brants tied for fifth place in the ten-team field, while the blossoming freshman tandem of skipper Roberta Steele and crew Christina Cordeiro finished behind only MIT and Tufts, earning third place in the B division. The team’s strong performance promised to help its overall ranking; seventh was the lowest the Crimson had been ranked all season.

MARCHIANDO TROPHY

At the MIT-hosted Lynne Marchiando Team Race Regatta, the Crimson sailed arguably its best event of the weekend despite difficult circumstances.

The team finished in third place overall behind Rhode Island (URI) and MIT in a peculiarly designed course.

“We were kind of underdogs going in against teams like MIT, URI, and St. Mary’s,” co-captain Sloan Devlin said. “It was definitely a challenging weekend for us, but overall, we sailed pretty well as a group.”

The typical course is N-shaped, while the MIT courses are more rectangular in form. For a Harvard team that was sailing its first intersectional together, the circumstances provided for an interesting time out.

“Some teams found it fun, and others found it frustrating,” Devlin said. “We weren’t complaining too much.”

Skippers who joined Devlin at the event included junior Matthew Knowles and freshman Andrew Flynn. The crews consisted of juniors Ashley Nathanson, Christina Dahlman, and Samantha Fink.

EMILY WICK TROPHY

Boston College also played host to the Emily Wick Trophy on March 25, where the Crimson took fifth place. Steele and junior crew Marion Guillaume paced Harvard with a fifth-place finish, while the Crimson’s second team of Baker and Brants took No. 15. A total of 22 teams competed, with Dartmouth finishing first and Boston College taking second.

OWEN TROPHY

The only regatta of the weekend that saw Harvard finish outside of the top five was the Owen Trophy—incidentally, the only event that the Crimson hosted.

The 16-team field had Harvard in 11th place once the action was over, but that position was helped by the A division tandem of freshman skipper Megan Watson and senior crew Mallory Greimann. The pair’s sixth-place finish came before junior skipper Robbie McIntosh and freshman Margaret Wang took 12th in the B division.

—Staff writer Malcom A. Glenn can be reached at mglenn@fas.harvard.edu.