The sailing team is the Barack Obama of the collegiate sailing circuit: more intelligent, better looking and steadily rising in the rankings until the end, when it will find itself at the top.
Or so it hopes.
After two weeks of overwhelmingly impressive racing, the sailing team was awarded another boost in the national rankings, from No. 6 to No. 5 as of Oct. 14. As of Monday, the team is ranked third in New England. Keeping up with this trend of dominance, the Jumbos posted some more strong finishes this weekend.
The team's best finish came at the Captain Hurst Bowl, a two-day regatta held at Dartmouth. The Jumbos managed a second-place finish out of 20 teams, scoring a combined 122 points from 20 races between two divisions and narrowly edging out third-place Boston University's 123 points.
The A division boat was sailed by the seasoned duo of junior Tomas Hornos and senior tri-captain Lara Hwa, while the B division consisted of senior tri-captain Baker Potts and classmate Christina Kelly. The A division boat finished third to garner 73 of the 122 overall points. Meanwhile Potts and Kelly were able to win the B division, bringing in only 49 points.
"We did well considering the conditions," Hornos said. "[The breeze was] pretty light and inconsistent, but we were able to just stay in the game. Other teams were up and down, but Baker was able to win his division and I was able to figure out the course at the end. I was able to put together a few good finishes at the end."
Potts stayed relatively consistent throughout the day, winning three races and finishing in the top 10 in nine of the 10 races.
When asked to describe how well his teammate and captain Potts did, Hornos spoke with brevity.
"Baker pretty much just dominated," he said.
"We were happy but we didn't want to get carried away because we knew this wasn't the top-top regatta of the weekend," Hornos said. "There was a regatta at the Naval Academy where a lot of our competition was. We knew we were going to do well."
With third-place BU and fourth-place Brown both within eight points of Tufts, the strong finish saved at least a two-spot drop overall.
There was a noticeable void of Tufts boats at the Navy Fall Intersectional at the Naval Academy, where the majority of the top teams in the nation raced for early-season supremacy. The Jumbos did not schedule in time for the regatta's registration last spring, and consequently sought out other competitive regattas.
The Jumbos also seized the opportunity to sail in familiar waters this weekend on the Upper Mystic Lake for the Lane Trophy regatta. It is always a welcome occasion when the team gets to race on the lake on which it practices every day, as its sailors are accustomed to the conditions.
For the regatta, Tufts sailed in a round-robin style team race, in which it turned in a third-place finish out of the eight teams present. And since one of the eight teams originally scheduled dropped out, a second Jumbo team was assembled to fill the void and ended up claiming fifth.
Still, the Jumbos were not entirely satisfied with the overall results on the day.
"We worked together pretty well," said senior tri-captain Dan Altreuter, who sailed one of the three boats for the first team. "It wasn't perfect, though, as you can see from the results of the regatta."
As part of the original Tufts team, Altreuter sailed with sophomore Sara Carnahan in one boat, while juniors Andrew Criezis and Jennifer Watkins teamed up in the second boat and seniors Robby Moore and Amanda Harwood sailed the third.
Although the Jumbos are accustomed to the Upper Mystic Lake's volatile sailing conditions, stiff breezes nevertheless caused trouble on the water.
"There was a big breeze, so it turned out to be more of a contest of how fast you could make your boat go as opposed to tactics," Altreuter said. "Tactics were still a huge part, but the heavy breeze emphasized boat speed.
"Our starts were not very good to begin with," he continued. "Coming around the leeward mark, we occasionally didn't make the plays we needed to and as a result, we let the opportunity slip away from us."
The third-place Jumbo team finished behind Boston College and Dartmouth. Despite glimpses of Tufts' typically great sailing, the overall sentiment was clear.
"It was a regatta we can certainly improve upon," Altreuter said. "We made a few easily correctable mistakes."
