Sailors Take 1st, 3rd on Charles

Taking advantage of a break from the whirlwind weekends that often feature four and five events over a two-day stretch, the Harvard sailing team competed in just two regattas—both on the nearby Charles River—over Easter weekend. The Crimson capitalized on the relaxed schedule, as the No. 8 women earned a hard-fought first-place finish, while the No. 5 co-eds also sailed well, taking third-place overall.

It was the first top finish for the women all spring, and it came just as the season begins to wind down for the team.

“We just wanted to make our mark because our season is ending soon,” senior crew Christina Dahlman said. “We only have one more regular season regatta. Then it’s the New England championships.”

Things came together this weekend at the President’s Trophy, hosted by Boston University. Harvard totaled 60 points in the 16-team field, while Yale was close behind in second, scoring 65 points. St. Mary’s, Dartmouth, and Charleston rounded out the top five. Though BU, MIT and Tufts were all in the field, it was only the Crimson that was able to take advantage of the home waters.

“I think it definitely helped,” sophomore crew Lauren Brants said of sailing on the Charles. “We’re used to a lot of the shifts, and we always have our eyes open for that. We haven’t had a lot of breeze on the river as much recently, so that was a change, but we always have different shifts in our mindset, and we capitalized on that.”

The co-ed team didn’t fare quite as well at the Lynne Marchiando Team Race, hosted just down the river at MIT. Cold weekend temperatures defined both regattas on Saturday and Sunday, but frigid conditions seemed to be more adverse for the co-eds, as eight teams were relegated to a single round robin to combat the weather.

Yale’s 6-1 record proved enough to take the win, and the Crimson found itself tied with Stanford in second place with a 5-2 score at the conclusion of the races. Harvard fell in the tiebreaker, however, to take third place overall.

Though the high temperature on the Charles never exceeded 38 degrees, it was the Crimson’s experience in such conditions that sustained both teams throughout the weekend.

“We were prepared for a cold weekend, and the Charles River delivered,” Dahlman said.

The women’s A-division saw sophomore captain Megan Watson as skipper to Dahlman’s position as crew. The tandem’s 28 points just barely beat out St. Mary’s in second place with 29, while the B-division had an equally close first-place showing. Sophomore skipper Roberta Steele and Brants scored 32 points compared to 33 for Charleston.

“I think [Roberta] definitely did really well,” Brants said. “She had her head in the game both in and outside the boat, and she paid attention to the wind.”

Steele and the rest of team turned in its best performance during the second day of competition.

“On Saturday it was light and shifty, and it was hard to get a lot of races done, because the wind would shift,” Dahlman said. “On Sunday, the breeze was blowing hard, with big puffs from the west, but it was exciting since we’d been practicing in those conditions.”

The success helped validate the practice of a women’s team that hadn’t managed a finish higher than fourth-place before the weekend.

“Our coach said that he was excited because we always put in a lot of effort, and we did well on execution this week,” Brants said. “We were able to kind of grind it out.”

The women are convinced that the win will have lasting reverberations heading into the final pre-Nationals regatta next week.

“It was a good confidence booster, because we were really consistent,” Dahlman said. “We’re right up at the end of it, so we’re trying to get all our ducks in a row and get ready for a grand finale.”

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