Sailing team welcomes 30 first-years before season opener

Tufts sailing begins their fall season this weekend. The team will look to match or surpass their previous season's achievements with a roster that is almost completely new. After losing strong sailors from the class of 2015, the team has taken on 30 first-years, who now comprise almost half of the team's 64-person roster.

"The biggest obstacle [for the team] will be the growing pains we may have with such a big freshman class," junior tri-captain Liz Fletcher said. "Just making sure that everyone gets equal time on the water at practice, and that each freshman is getting enough coaching time [is our priority]."

"We graduated a bunch of seniors last year, which is both a good and bad thing," senior tri-captain Pierre duPont added. "It's a bad thing because most of the seniors were really good, but it's good because it gives lots of people opportunities to step up this year and make a difference."

The beginning of the season poses some unexpected challenges due to the inexperience of the new sailors, some of whom have no high school sailing experience. 

"We're really excited about the freshmen coming in; there's a lot of talent that they have from high school," Fletcher said. "That being said, we're also taking a few freshmen who have never sailed before but are very athletic, so we'll work with them to learn and train, [and aim] to get them on the water as soon as possible."

The Jumbos hope that both the length of their schedule -- they have both a fall and spring season -- and its depth will be able to prepare the new sailors for the competition ahead.

"We go to about 110 events a year, which makes us, as our coach likes to say, the busiest college sports program in the world," duPont said. "[It's] great because it means that everyone gets to sail...which is something that doesn't happen at other schools, where they keep it a lot smaller, with just the top 10 sailors."

The team will split up between MIT, Yale, Maine Maritime, Roger Williams, Tufts and Harvard this weekend to begin their season.

"It gets pretty hectic, but we're already going to have most of our freshmen out on the water competing this weekend," Fletcher said. "Our main focus for this weekend is just to get focused again and be back in the college sailing mindset, and try to get off on the best foot that we can."

Another challenge that the team will aim to overcome this season is the unavoidable internal competition that exists between teammates.

"It's always tricky for sailing teams because [sailing] is, in a large way, an individual sport, and at practice you're competing between your teammates," Fletcher said. "So sometimes it's hard to drop that competitive attitude towards your own teammates since you're spending an entire practice just competing against them."

Fletcher, along with duPont and senior tri-captain Caroline Atwood, will be looking to address that issue for the upcoming season in the hopes that it will not only foster healthy competition between their athletes, but also improve the overall performance of the team.

"One of my goals is to try and really unify the team and have everyone...thinking about the best interests of the entire team, and it's something that I've been conscious of for the past two years," Fletcher said. "[Pierre, Caroline and I are] trying to encourage things like on-water coaching in between boats and have everyone thinking about [not only] improving their own level but also [that of] the entire team."

And for fellow tri-captain duPont, after graduating a large number of last year's team, setting the tone early on is important.

"The most important job that I have as a captain is motivating people -- getting people to come to practice on time and giving it their best shot to try to improve," duPont said. "We're going to have to work a little harder right at the start, so one thing we're really working on is to hit the ground running because we have important events right away."

The co-ed team finished ninth at the Inter-collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Dinghy National Championship and eighth at the ICSA Team Racing National Championship -- results they are hoping to meet or even surpass this upcoming season.

The team has also used the fall to capitalize on the lengthier pre-season time to practice on larger boats at Boston Harbor, where they will send one boat to compete at the qualifier on the weekend of Oct. 17.

"We usually sail small boats at this time of the season with a couple of exceptions, but during the preseason we sailed bigger boats -- 22, 23, 24 feet long [boats] that have three or four people on them compared to just two," duPont said. "We do a lot of that during the preseason because we have time to go and spend all day in Boston Harbor. Because the [boats are] bigger, they're less responsive, so it's a different technical skill set, but the tactics and strategy are still pretty much the same. It's important for us to [practice in the pre-season] because there is a national championship in those boats, and the best time we can practice is now."

The Jumbos' continued success in the fall season will also allow them to compete at high-level events.

"How we place at the upper-level regattas determines whether we can register for next year's regattas, so if we do well now then we can continue going to the top level events," Fletcher said. "It's [really] about being able to return to the same level events next year."

More importantly, Tufts recognizes that its success in the fall also determines long-term growth opportunities for the team.

"One thing that really helped us get people [with sailing experience] to come to Tufts last year was the last ranking released right after the Atlantic Coast Championships," duPont said. "That ranking stays [online] while all the juniors are deciding what teams they want to apply to until the next [ranking] comes out, so it's important to have a good ranking at the end of the fall season."

The team will be gearing up for the Atlantic Coast Championships on the weekend of Nov. 14, where the top 18 teams stretching from New England to Florida will compete. Other milestones along the way will be the Hood Trophy on the weekend of Sept. 26 -- an event that Tufts won the past couple of years -- and the ever-competitive Truxton Umstead held in mid-October.

"Our biggest strength is how excited everyone is; upperclassmen are really stoked [about] our freshmen and our freshmen seem to be super excited to be here," Fletcher said. "I think energy levels and morale are really high [right now]."