Sailing Finishes Last at Final Fall Regatta

The Harvard co-ed sailing team fell short in its final weekend of competition in the fall, finishing in last place in a scrimmage among teams from the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association.

On Saturday, the Crimson sailed just a little further down the Charles River for the eight-team regatta. MIT hosted the event for conference teams that qualified for the Co-ed Atlantic Coast Championship.

Harvard earned its qualification for the championship regatta by way of a seventh-place finish in the Schell Trophy Regatta on Oct. 27.

“It was a close regatta, but we were playing in home waters and would have liked to beat a couple of teams,” Harvard coach Mike O’Connor said. “We were up against some tough competition but weren’t very pleased with the results.”

If not for Hurricane Sandy, the Crimson would have traveled to King’s Point, N.Y. for ACCs. The Merchant Marine Academy was supposed to host the championship regatta, but the Academy cancelled because of storm-related damaged.

Event organizers tried to relocate the regatta to the Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., but the Academy also suffered damage from the hurricane. Eventually, the regatta was completely cancelled.

Despite the sudden cancellation, the NEISA decided to hold a small, informal championship for the schools that qualified.

Harvard scored 124 total points on the weekend. Although the Crimson tied with Brown for seventh place, the team lost the tiebreaker and finished in the eighth position. Boston College scored 85 points, just two points better than Dartmouth, to take the regatta title.

Sophomore Graham Slattery and junior Alma Lafler competed in the A division, totaling 56 points. The A division sailors from Boston College recorded the lowest point score with 36.

Meanwhile, freshmen Andrew Mollerus and Sydney Karnovsky represented Harvard in the B division. The pair tallied 68 points, far off the standard of 38 set by Dartmouth’s B Division racers.

Since the regatta featured only eight teams, all of the boats competed in a combined, 16-boat race. Usually, A and B divisions boats compete separately.

The regatta marked the close of a difficult fall season for the Crimson. Harvard’s co-ed team finished no higher than sixth place this season. It finished sixth twice—at the Hood Trophy regatta on Sept. 22 and at Dartmouth’s Captain Hurst Bowl on Oct. 14.

The Crimson’s women squad did not fare much better, though, as its second-place finish at the Women’s Toni Deuthsch ’58 Regatta on Sept. 8 marked the team’s only top-five finish of the fall.

Over the next couple of months, Harvard will look to build on its weaknesses. The winter marks a period of focus on weight room workouts and general conditioning.

According to O’Connor, the team will use this time to correct mistakes that plagued the team throughout the fall season.

“We need to ramp up our strength training because we need to be stronger and quicker in our boats,” O’Connor said. “We need to execute more consistently in the starting line so that we are racing in the early part of the fleet more often as opposed to coming back against good competition. We really need to learn how to start more consistently across the board.”

Junior captain Ben Lamont believes that his team will not spend any time dwelling on this weekend’s disappointing performance.

“The result we will look at is really the qualifier for ACCs because that’s the best regatta that we sailed this fall,” Lamont said. “This weekend was a bit of a letdown with ACCs not happening.”

Although the team did not record many high finishes, Lamont emphasized the many positive changes that have taken place this fall.

“We are a young team, focused on improving and getting better, so we have been pretty happy and proud of the work everybody has been doing,” Lamont said. “From the freshmen to the seniors, from folks who were committed junior sailors to folks [who] walked on to the team in college having never sailed before, everyone improved over the course of the fall through their hard work.”

“We are not yet where we want to be,” he continued. “But I think we are in a good position going forward into the spring to where we want to be. Our goal is to qualify for nationals in Florida and have a strong showing there.”

—Staff writer Blake Sundel can be reached at bsundel@college.harvard.edu.