For the coed and women's sailing teams, the fall season firmly cemented their rankings as one of the top 10 collegiate teams in the nation.
The coed team finished the season as the No. 7 team in the country after a strong sixth-place finish at the ACC Dinghy Championships in early November. After starting as the No. 14-ranked team in the nation, the ACCs capped off a season of consistent improvements.
Senior tri-captain Meredith Ginley crewed for fellow tri-captain Baker Potts at the ACCs. Several seasons of experience in the same boat helped this duo sail to a fourth-place finish out of 18 boats in the B division, bringing in 105 of the team's 219 overall points.
"We like to call last year a building year," Ginley said. "So this season, we came in with lots of experience. Our older age has a lot to do with our success."
In sailing, success is mostly a function of the gross amount of time spent practicing on the water - something the Tufts team took to heart.
"We've been practicing a lot," Ginley said. "We attended lots of regattas and got some good experience out on the water. In the beginning of the season, we spread out our talent and sent our best boats to a bunch of different regattas, which helped us qualify for other regattas later on."
To put it modestly, the Jumbos sailed some incredible races this fall, and in many different venues.
The season started off with a bang as sophomore Tomas Hornos, while sailing unaffiliated with Tufts but nevertheless showing its talent, captured the Snipe World Championship in Portugal in early September.
In the first weekend of team competition, Tufts sailed to a commanding 31-point victory at the Penobscot Bay Open. In the A division, Potts and Ginley won four of the eight races and finished with only 24 points, while the B division sailors, juniors Peter Bermudez and Francine Magasiny, also won two races and finished with 26 points. Second-place Boston University fell far short, with 81 total points.
This early regatta victory, however, was more than just a morale booster. It set the precedent for the high level of sailing that the team maintained throughout the rest of the season. In fact, consistency was the key for the Jumbos, whose schedule consisted of over 60 regattas in only 10 weekends.
Of these 60-plus regattas, the Jumbos reeled in 23 top-five finishes and six victories, two of which were at home at Upper Mystic Lake. Tufts also showed talent in singlehanded races, with sophomore Andrew Criezis finishing seventh at the Singlehanded National Championship at the University of Washington in early November.
Many of the Jumbos' impressive finishes were at the hands of senior tri-captain Kaity Storck. For the past three years, Storck has been skippering the A division boats for the women's team. She is a seasoned veteran who has won many races; however, it was not until the ACC Women's Championship this fall that she reached a huge turning point in her career.
Storck and her longtime crew, fellow senior Lyndsey Gibbons-Neff, placed first in the A division at the ACCs in early November with 38 points. The duo won four of nine races, bringing the team into fourth overall after a mediocre performance by the B division boat put the Jumbos in 11th. With 126 points overall, the team squeaked by St. Mary's, who finished with 128 points and was, prior to the ACCs, the No. 1 women's team in the nation.
"It's always been a personal goal to win," Storck said of the ACCs. "It's really exciting to win [my division] at such a competitive regatta.
"We did pretty well compared to what we expected," Storck continued. "The people who sailed the B division last year graduated, so we didn't have much experience."
Nevertheless, after months of sailing and a number of regattas, during which the team evaluated their potential B division sailors, the Jumbos settled on senior Chryssa Rask and freshman Margaret Rew.
"Chryssa was originally a crew," Storck said. "But then she started skippering and building up some experience."
In the end, the team chose well in Rask, and was able to overcome the inexperience that kept it down earlier in the season by placing fourth overall at the ACCs, the biggest regatta of the fall.
"They've made big improvements all season long," said Storck of the younger sailors.
Improvement has been the name of the game for the Jumbos this season. With a lot of experience and momentum from this fall, chances are good that they will continue to get better in the spring with the hope of doing some damage at the National Championships in late May.
