There's a lot to live up to when you're among the top 10 of anything in the United States. Just ask the sailing team.
Perennially ranked within the top 10 sailing teams in the nation, the co-ed squad heads into the spring season with the intent to dethrone the reigning co-ed dinghy national champion Georgetown Hoyas, who currently sit at No. 4 in the national rankings. Atop the list are the Seahawks of St. Mary's College of Maryland, with whom the Jumbos will spend their upcoming spring break training in Maryland.
"Our spring break trip is part of the reason why our team is so successful," senior tri-captain Dan Altreuter said. "The trip gives us the opportunity to travel down to Maryland, sailing two weekend regattas at sites we normally wouldn't travel to, and train during full-day practices for the five days in between. Our training trip is when the team hits full speed, setting the tone for the rest of the season."
And indeed, the tone needs to be set early; last season, the Jumbos got off to a slow start and were unable to gain momentum late in the season when it was needed, as they finished in a disappointing 12th place in the Intercollegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Eastern Semifinals, failing to qualify for Nationals for the second straight year. The team hopes that it will not go a third year in a row without a trip to the biggest stage in collegiate sailing.
"As a team, we have excellent chances of making the fleet racing Nationals," junior Tomas Hornos said. "However, we had a reality check at this weekend's [practice] team race regatta where we saw that we need a lot of work on team racing. We still have good chances of qualifying for team racing Nationals, but its going to take a lot of determination."
Aside from the standard co-ed fleet racing, in which each team puts forth two to three boats that compete individually and combine the scores after the fact, there is the team racing format, in which three boats compete together in a single race against only one other team, looking to achieve a better three-boat combination than the opponent. This different format elicits a whole new set of tactics, making a team's ability to fleet race almost entirely mutually exclusive from its ability to team race. This gap is something that the Jumbos are looking to eliminate en route to making a trip to both the team race and fleet race Nationals later this spring.
Although early-season indications may show that there is a vast amount of improvement to be made, the Jumbos nevertheless are confident that such a feat can and will happen.
"After our first weekend, we seem rusty, but we also haven't sailed in four months, so I am confident that we can only get better," Hornos said. "The team overall is strong; we have a lot of older, experienced skippers and several talented freshmen that have a lot of potential."
"While we typically [can] send just three to four boats to co-ed and team racing Nationals, the team as a whole takes part in training for the event," Altreuter added. "Without a strong team as a whole, our top skippers and crews can't get the competitive practice environment they need. As a 60-member team, our goal is to collectively raise the level of competition in practice in order to both improve ourselves and help our A team get ready for Nationals."
By far the largest athletic team at Tufts, the sailing team happens to have only one coach: Ken Legler, who has been with the Jumbos since the fall of 1980. As a result, much responsibility is placed on the three captains, seniors Baker Potts, Lara Hwa and Altreuter.
"The captains are doing a great job, especially with the fact that our team is so big," Hornos said. "There are many aspects to running a large team that go unnoticed, but Baker, Lara and Dan are definitely working hard."
The heart of the campaign toward Nationals will begin on the weekend of March 21-22 with several key regattas in the Northeast region, including the Truxtun Umsted Invitational at the U.S. Naval Academy.
