The co-ed sailing team this weekend competed in the Navy Fall Intersectional regatta hosted by Navy and showed flashes of brilliance, but ultimately finished lower than it had hoped with an 11th-place finish out of 20 teams.
Given the Jumbos' No. 14 national ranking, though, the 11th placing wasn't an underperformance. Twelve of the 20 teams at the regatta are currently in the top 20 national rankings.
There were four divisions in the regatta: the A and B Divisions, which were handled by a skipper and crew, and the C and D Divisions, which were singlehanded. The team raced a total of 80 races to finish with an overall score of 808.
Junior Nicolas Russo-Larsson skippered the A Division. Senior Roisin Magee and junior Adam Weisman split time as crew for Russo-Larsson, with Magee sailing races one, two and 12 through 20, and Weisman sailing races three through 11. With a slew of frustrating finishes in the first seven out of the 20 races, the A boat came in 15th of the 20 teams.
Russo-Larsson attributed the disappointing finish to a number of careless errors. "I made many mistakes on Saturday, such as undershooting the lay-line in traffic, which led to poor results," he said. "Roisin and I had a much better day on Sunday, showing that we could turn it around in the A Division."
Magee believes the boat could have been more positive and confident.
"One of the things that we need to work on most now is our mental game," Magee said. "We tend to get into ruts once we have one bad race and have trouble getting back on our game and coming back from it."
"When sailing, if you are stuck in a bad mental state, it is impossible to sail well because you don't focus on the important things such as finding the next shift and being patient and rational when making decisions about where to go on the course," she continued. "Being in a bad mental state also leads to careless errors."
In the B division, junior Massimo Soriano and crewmembers — senior Margaret Rew and freshman Cameron Barclift — finished in an impressive fourth place with 139 points. Rew sailed the first and second races and 12 through 20, while Barclift sailed three through 11.
Rew believed the positive finish was due to consistency and effective strategies.
"We were incredibly consistent and that made a big difference in a tight fleet," she said. "Consistent top-five finishes the first day had us leading for a long time. We were fast and sailed conservatively. We learned from all the big mistakes we had made in the past couple weekends and avoided them, capitalizing on other teams' mistakes instead.
"We also showed a good deal of flexibility — we were able to sail fast in the wide range of conditions Navy threw at us this weekend, anything from 25 knots and gusty to five knots and choppy," Rew continued. "Those conditions require very different skill sets, and we've been working to develop all of them."
In the C Division, sophomore Will Hutchings sailed to a sixth-place finish. Albert Nichols, also a sophomore, sailed the D Division until a back injury put him out of action. Barclift, having completed his round of duty crewing in the B Division, took the helm in the rest of the D Division races. The boat finished 14th in the division.
Meanwhile, the women's team sailed at Yale's Intersectional Regatta, coming in a disappointing 15th out of 18 teams.
A Division skipper senior Meghan Pesch and her crewmember junior Marina Miaoulis sailed to a 12th-place finish. The B Division boat was skippered by junior Renee Gagne, with freshman Margaret Bacon and junior Midori Tanaka as crew. The boat came in 15th in its division.
Pesch believed that not executing their game plan combined with overpowering windy conditions affected the results the most.
"A lot of the time, we would come up with a game plan for the race, but then we might have gotten held out to a side so we couldn't execute what we wanted to," she said. "Looking to the future, I think taking the time to slow down a bit and have the ability to tack and go where you want is better for your finish, rather then being forced to the wrong side of the course."
Due to the rough conditions, the races were postponed until late afternoon Saturday, and on Sunday there was plenty of chop to for the sailors to navigate through. Both the A and B Division boats capsized at some point over the regatta due to the conditions, while consistent, small mistakes hindered any chances of success.
This weekend, the Jumbos will look to improve their results at the Sherman Hoyt Trophy regatta, hosted by Brown, where last year the team finished 11th out of 18 teams.
