Despite the fact that the nationally ranked No. 9 sailing team did not perform particularly well as a whole this past weekend, it still might move up in the national rankings.
In three regattas, Tufts, by its own standards, fell short in two of the three.
At the Old Guard/Owen Mosbacher Knapp Trophy regatta at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, the Jumbos pulled in a sub-par 16th place out of 20. Scoring 403 points in 30 races, the Jumbos finished a startling 297 points behind the first-place Boston College Eagles with 107 -- an average of almost 10 spots ahead of the Jumbos in every race.
Meanwhile, at the Duplin Women's Team Race hosted by Tufts at Upper Mystic Lake, the women's squad came in fifth out of 10 teams, going 9-5. While this outcome should be considered a failure by any means, it was the fact that only the top four teams made the championship round on Sunday that stung for the Jumbos. On Saturday, the Jumbos went 6-3 against the nine other teams in the round-robin team race format, which was not enough to propel them into the top four in order to give themselves a shot at the title.
The lone bright spot for Tufts was at the Boston Dinghy Cup at Harvard/MIT on the Charles. Here, the Jumbos finished second out of 18 with 359 points in 51 races between three divisions. Given the scope of the number of races sailed, it is safe to say the Jumbos missed first place by an extremely slim margin, placing only 13 points behind first-place finisher Harvard. In fact, the Jumbos had been winning the regatta for the majority of the weekend, but ultimately, two 16th-place finishes and a 13th-place finish in three of the last six races was enough of a margin for Harvard to slip into first.
"We're satisfied with the second-place finish but just a little disappointed that we weren't able to seal the deal, since we had been winning the regatta since early on," said junior Tomas Hornos, who was at the helm of the A division boat with senior tri-captain Lara Hwa as crew.
Junior Andrew Criezis, who sailed in the C division, shared a similar sentiment and noted the team's substantial progress since last year.
"I was pumped because we have come a long way since last year when just about the same team did the event and ended up far back in the fleet," Criezis said. "We've stepped it up. Only bummer was we lost first by a few points -- it was close, but we'll get them next time."
The B division was skippered by senior tri-captain Baker Potts with senior Christina Kelly, while combinations of the foursome of seniors Peter Bermudez and Francine Magasinn and juniors Criezis and Jennifer Watkins handled the C division boat.
Last week at the Truxtun Umsted Intersectional, that same basic group of sailors pulled in a ninth-place finish against similar competition and attributed the sluggishness on the water to a spring break hangover. This time around, the Jumbos were rested, and the results showed it.
"I think we felt more fresh and relaxed from a week back after our spring break," Hornos said. "The Charles River is also a place pretty familiar to us, which helped ... Lara and I did a good job of minimizing stupid mistakes such as starting early or committing penalties. This enabled us to stay consistent and avoid double-digit finishes. As a team, I think we all sailed clean and to our potential ... In some races, I ended up losing several places because I got out of phase with the wind and was impatient in my decision-making."
Criezis, on the other hand, acknowledged that the team still had room for improvement.
"We could have improved on our consistency, which means better starts from race one and getting ahead from the beginning and then being conservative for the rest of the race while covering the fleet," he said.
In terms of specific improvements, Criezis and Watkins have been working on one of the most critical parts of a race in terms of positioning.
"My crew Jen Watkins and I have been working really hard on mark rounding drills so that we move together," Criezis noted. "We're trying to make all the basic movements in the boat muscle memory so that our body just reacts and we can be that much faster than our competition."
The second-place finish showed at least, among other things, that Tufts knows how to allocate its funds. In other words, the most significant regatta of the weekend -- the one that counts toward the national rankings -- was the Dinghy Cup, where Tufts finished second. The others, though significant in their own ways, did not count toward the national ranking and therefore, in the long journey toward making the national championship regatta at the end of May, did no harm to the Jumbos' team standing.
With such a rigorous competition schedule, the Jumbos must leave each weekend behind in the rearview mirror and continue to focus ahead, as each weekend is pivotal in the ability to qualify for Regionals and Nationals at the end of the season.
"This weekend we have a really important team race regatta called the SNETR [Southern New England Team Race], hosted by Coast Guard and Conn. College," Hornos said. "Eighteen of the top college teams will be there, where they will be split up into nine teams for each site. On Sunday, the top eight teams will face off in the gold round and we hope to be there and be fighting for a top finish."
