Fourth Place Finish Squeaks Jumbos into Nationals

Junior AJ Crane and senior Clare Dooley lead the women's sailing team to a fourth place finish at this past weekend's New England Championships in Providence, RI. The top five finish gave the Jumbos a berth in the upcoming National Championships.

The host of the regatta, Brown University, easily finished in first place with 100 points. Harvard came in at second with 117, and Yale was third with 135 points. The Jumbos were only six points behind the Bulldogs in fourth, and Dartmouth clinched the last spot at Nationals by finishing fifth overall and 17 points behind Tufts.

Boston College finished in sixth place and will not qualify for Nationals. With 171 points, it was too far behind Dartmouth to catch up.

Coming into the second day of races, the Jumbos were not in a very good position. They were in fifth place with Brown and Harvard firmly set in the one and two positions.

"After Saturday's races we were worried about qualifying," said Crane. "We were holding on to the final spot for Nationals but we were not racing well."

On Sunday, the team raced better and Crane was able to skipper her boat into a second place finish in the A division. After 14 races, Crane and her partner, junior Kristen Tysell, were only seven points behind Harvard's A team.

In the B division, Dooley and her partner, senior captain Caroline Hall, were able to climb up enough to finish in sixth place and give the team its fourth place overall finish.

The National Championships will be held June 2 - 4 in Detroit, MI. The regatta is missing one of the better teams, Old Dominion College, who usually earns a spot in the championships. Regardless, the competition will be tough.

For Tufts, finishing fourth in the regionals raises some questions as to whether the team will be able to repeat last year's sixth place finish within a field of 18 teams. But Crane feels confident that the team can have success in Detroit.

"We have experience. Clare and I have raced at Nationals the past two years," Crane said. "We were also surprised by some of the team's success at New Englands based on how those teams performed during the season."

In the meantime, the team will keep its racing edge by competing in next weekend's Women's Marchiando Trophy held at Dartmouth College.

The co-ed team also participated in two regattas this past weekend. But with the New England Championships coming up next weekend, the regattas were without two key members of the team.

As classes wind down, the coaches gave senior captain Pete Levesque and senior Jarred Maxwell the week off to get their academics in order before their big races in the coming weeks.

With the two seniors absent from this past weekend's race, the Jumbos finished with mixed results. Tufts hosted and took first place in a team-racing event. The Jumbos beat out rivals Brown, Harvard, and Dartmouth in the round-robin style regatta.

Rob Pascal headed up the three-boat team as the Jumbos lost only one race to finish the weekend's event with a 7-1 record. Second place Brown had three losses.

In the team's other Regatta, the squad finished seventh out of 18 teams. Freshman Dave Siegal headed up the A boat and finished fifth in that division, while Brendan Shattuck skippered the B boat to eighth place.

Though the result was not as strong as previous regattas this season, the team was able to accomplish the goal of resting their seniors while still getting Siegal good work in a competitive race.

Based on fall season results, the team already qualified for New Englands. Levesque and Maxwell will most likely be joined by Siegal in the New England Team Racing Championships held at Tufts this coming weekend.

The following week, Levesque and Maxwell will skipper the A and B division boats, respectively, in the New England Fleet Racing Championships hosted by MIT and Harvard.