Long Island Sound's notoriously shifty breezes were, simply put, devastating to the sailing team this past weekend at the Harry Anderson Trophy at Yale.
The nationally ranked No. 11 Jumbos were already at a disadvantage because they were sailing in 420s — boats similar in size to the Larks sailed at home on Upper Mystic Lake but that carry a sufficient amount of disparity to throw off a skipper trying to navigate his way through unfamiliar waters. The tough conditions and boats, combined with the fact that 14 of the top 20 ranked teams in the nation made up Tufts' competition at the regatta, led the Jumbos to a sub-par 15th place out of 20 teams.
All things considered, it would have been tough for any team to do well at this regatta. However, the Tufts sailing team, with its legacy as one of the most successful teams in collegiate sailing history, holds itself to a higher standard. That was the reason that senior Andrew Criezis, who skippered the A division boat for the Jumbos, was a bit frustrated after the regatta.
"My first reaction was that we sailed like crap," Criezis said.
With classmate Jennifer Watkins as crew, Criezis finished 18th in the A division with 169 points in 12 races. In the B division, sophomore Massimo Soriano took the helm with classmate Emily Shaw crewing, coming in 14th with 127 points over the 12 races.
Criezis, who has excelled over the past few seasons in single-handed competition and has steadily risen through the ranks of double-handed skippers on Tufts' squad, attributes much of his disappointing performance to poor starts.
"I was over the line in four races and could barely crawl back from starting in last in a really competitive regatta," Criezis said.
"Every team was good, and anytime you made a mistake, a boat or two would pass you," he continued. "In most fleets you can crawl back from a mistake, but it's especially hard in the top-tier regattas."
Shaw noted just how much the conditions played a role in the unfortunate results.
"The wind was extremely unpredictable," she said. "What worked one race didn't necessarily work in the next race."
"The conditions were rather tricky because the wind was shifting a lot, and every three to four times the wind shifted, there was a major shift of 20 degrees that stuck for a while, and that meant you were either doing really well or really far behind," Criezis added.
Of course, this is merely the first weekend of a long fall season ahead for the Jumbos. All the team can do now is put the poor performance out of mind and look to improve in the weeks ahead.
"This is the first regatta of the fall, not to mention, the first time many of us have sailed a 420 in what feels like a year," Shaw said. "It took a little while to get used to the boats again. While I was not pleased with how we performed, it was comforting to see that no team was consistently doing well — a testament to how unpredictable the conditions were."
But the sailing team's results this weekend were not entirely bad. In fact, the unranked women's team accomplished quite a feat, winning the Antonia Schuman regatta at MIT by a single point. Moreover, junior skipper Catherine Swanson and first-year crew Mariel Marchand delievered a clutch performance, winning the final five races of the regatta and crushing the competition in the A division by scoring 85 points over 24 races. The second-place University of Rhode Island finished with 108.
In the B division, the Jumbos took sixth with 130 points. Senior Peggy Tautz skippered 20 of the 24 races, with first-year Natalie Salk filling in during races 17-20, all with junior Sally Levinson as crew.
The dominating performance by the women's team is a re-emergence of sorts after last year's disappointing finish. The women's team, with its own history of national success, was unable to crack even the top 10 in the New England rankings at the end of last spring. But with the way things are going, it doesn't look like that is going to happen again this fall.
This weekend, the Co-Ed team will make its way to the Charles River for the Hatch Brown Trophy regatta, while the women's team will head north to Dartmouth for the Mrs. Hurst Bowl.
