When you fall down, get right back up again. Make the most out of what you've got. Don't dwell on the past.
These are all snippets of pep-talks coaches often give their players in the wake of disappointment. When the sailing team's leader and senior tri-captain Baker Potts was disqualified from the first race on a technicality during the Hood Trophy regatta at Mystic Lake this weekend, the team found itself reaching from within to pull together a competitive performance.
Potts was disqualified from the first of three races on Saturday for finishing on the wrong side of an obscure finish line with multiple boats and buoys. The problem was that the finish line was nothing like anything either he or his crew, senior Christina Kelly, had seen in practice. They did not recognize the change in format.
"Both of us weren't thinking," Kelly said. "We'd gotten that far in the race, and at practice that's not how we do it. It was just kind of a dumb moment on both our parts."
The quick lapse in concentration caused Potts, and the Tufts team as a whole, to receive a score of 25 -- the number of boats in the fleet plus one, by rule -- instead of a score of around 10, the number he would have received had he and Kelly finished correctly.
But this early setback did not deter the Jumbos from soaring to an overall fourth-place finish out of 24 of the best teams in the nation, including Boston College, St. Mary's and Yale. In fact, nine of the top 12 ranked teams in the nation made their way to Upper Mystic Lake for the regatta.
A combination of factors -- primarily Potts' ability to keep his mind clear after the mistake -- allowed Tufts to finish with 40 points in six total races between two divisions. In other words, Potts's first race brought in 25 points; in the other five races combined, Tufts scored a spectacular 15. Potts finished second and sixth in his last two races. As it turns out, anything better than a 15th-place finish in his first race would have pushed the Jumbos from the fourth to the second overall position.
Kelly, who said she blames herself to a degree for the early mishap, also deserves some of the credit for the quick and powerful rebound.
"Baker's really good at communicating with me and talking tactics," Kelly said. "He talks through what he wants to do, what he thinks we should do and asks me what he thinks we should do."
Despite the impressive recovery, nothing would have been possible without Tufts junior Tomas Hornos. Hornos sailed in the A division with senior tri-captain Lara Hwa and garnered a mere seven points in his three races -- two third-place finishes and a first. While his consistency has always been crucial to his team's success, his performance on Saturday led the team to its fourth-place finish and limited the potentially huge damage from the B division boat's mishap in a home regatta that the team had planned on winning.
"We were pretty satisfied with how we did," Hwa said. "We did well despite the [poor] conditions. We just sailed the best that we could and we were able to finish well in our three races."
Despite the poor, light sailing conditions, as well as the early misstep from the other Jumbo boat and the fourth-place finish in a regatta that Tufts generally wins, Hwa was upbeat.
"It was slightly disappointing, indeed, because it was our home regatta and we were expecting to do really well," Hwa said. "But you know, mistakes happen and we just learn from our mistakes.
"And so now we hope something like that will never happen again," she continued. "[Potts is] a very talented sailor, so it was just kind of a freak accident. Our coach had never set a course like he did before, in a regatta or practice, so it really came as a surprise to all of us."
The fourth-place finish was good enough to bump the co-ed Jumbo team up in the New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association (NEISA) rankings to fourth.
In addition to the Hood Trophy, the Jumbos participated in the New England Sloop Championships at the Coast Guard Academy, where they finished in a subpar ninth position out of 11 boats; however, sailing a four-man sloop is not something the Jumbos practice -- it's a different skill-set that comes more from the individual sailor's past experience and summer racing.
Senior tri-captain Dan Altreuter sailed with senior Hans Tiefenthaler and juniors Sid Richardson and Greg Hering. The low finish did not count toward the Jumbos' regional or national standing.
"I'm really excited [about the season]," Kelly said. "We've jumped a lot in the rankings already, and everyone's doing really well in practice. I'm looking forward to the rest of the season. We're going to do really well."
