The waters proved friendly for the women's sailing team this weekend as it cruised to first place at the Reed Trophy Women's New England Championship, held at Conn. College.
With each division sailing 10 races apiece, A sailors' junior quad-captain Kaity Storck and junior Lyndsey Gibbons-Neff and the foursome of senior quad-captain Emily Randall and seniors Gretchen Curtis, Emma Creighton and Jen Giroux beat out 12 other teams. The Jumbos combined for the leading score of 89 points, with the A boat capturing first place in its division and the B boat taking fifth, just behind URI and Boston University.
Along with the victory, skippers Randall and Storck and crews Gibbons-Neff and Giroux also garnered All-New England honors.
As for the co-ed sailors, the Jumbos raced at the Fourth Annual George Morris Regatta, held this weekend at Boston University. A sailors' junior Michael Easton and senior quad-captain Anna Martin and B sailors' junior Peter Fallon and freshman Lou Tanyu navigated unpredictable wind patterns through 10 races to come up with scores of 57 and 101, respectively.
"The wind was pretty fluky," Easton said. "It was coming from all over. You don't have to win every race to do well, and rather than try to do that, we just worked on consistency and it paid off."
"There were a lot of shifts in the wind, so essentially the skippers just really had to look out for where the little puffs are," Tanyu said. "It's really hard to read as a crew. I have to know how hard I have to roll tack depending on whether the wind is lighter or heavier, how quickly I need to move in the boat, and how quickly I need to be working the jib."
The Jumbo squad posted an 11th-place finish among a field of 18 competitors, four of which were first-string teams.
"The competition at this regatta wasn't quite as decent as at other regattas that were going on this weekend," Easton said. "But BU, Bowdoin, USF and ODU had their first string teams there, and those teams gave us some good competition."
A sailors senior quad-captain Zander Kirkland and B sailors sophomore Baker Potts and junior Meredith Ginley also took seventh place overall.
The Jumbos took eighth place in both divisions at the Thompson Trophy, hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, and combined for a score of 277 overall.
After securing a win at April 15's Greater Boston Freshmen Championships at home, the Jumbo freshmen faced off against New England's top first-years in the Priddy Trophy at Mass. Maritime. Freshmen Andrew Criezis and Jennifer Watkins sailed 12 races, tallying 106 points over the course of the weekend despite a shaky beginning.
"We started out on Saturday doing really badly," Criezis said. "Every race, we improved - we went from the back of the fleet all the way to the front - it just took awhile. We know we can compete with the top guys, [and] we just need to be a little more consistent."
In addition to a deep fleet, bad wind and an unusual racing format also contributed to the Jumbos' struggles at the get-go.
"We were hoping to improve a lot on Sunday, but then the wind died and the regatta got called early in the afternoon after not getting many races in," Watkins said. "Also, it was different in that normally you have two boats in two divisions in each regatta and this time it was only one boat, which made it more competitive."
Members of the Jumbo team are looking toward this weekend, when they will compete in the New England Team Racing Championships at Harvard, hoping to lock up a trip to Nationals.
"That's going to be a really good regatta with tons of good teams," Easton said. "There are only a couple berths to qualify for Nationals, and that's what we're hoping to do. We have to be in the top three go to Nationals and show our stuff there."
