The co-ed sailing team was in San Francisco this past weekend as they attempted to bring Tufts its first ever Sloop National title at the ICSA Match Race National Championship. The Jumbos fell short of their goal, however, finishing fifth out of 10 teams.
Tufts had not made it to Nationals for sloop racing since 2004, according to head coach Ken Legler. The U.S. Naval Academy won the national title, with Roger Williams finishing second. Stanford rounded out the top three.
"We were a little disappointed with the weekend. We really didn't know how good the other teams were," Legler said. "The winning team was the team that surprised us. They were really just better prepared, but we thought we were about even with Roger Williams and better than the rest."
Sophomore Will Haeger was the skipper for Tufts with classmates David Liebenberg at bow and Maggie Bacon as trimmer. The Jumbos secured a spot in the championship regatta when they won the New England Sloop Championship on Sept. 25. That day, they finished in first in ten of 11 races.
On Friday, the sophomore trio started off the championship regatta on a successful note, finishing in third place after the first stage of round robin events. The Jumbos won seven of nine races, with their only two losses coming against the two top seeds: Navy and Roger Williams.
"In the very first race against Navy, Navy did a better job than us. Had we won that race, we would have been in the driver's seat the whole regatta. But Navy won and instead, they were in the driver's seat the whole regatta," Legler said.
In the quarterfinal knockout round, Tufts faced off with the University of South Florida, the sixth seed after the first stage. But the Bulls proved a strong opponent, taking two straight races to win the best-of-three series.
In the first race, Tufts forgot one of the rules, specific to the regatta.
"We had a couple of unforced errors, which dropped us down. We not only broke a rule, but we got passed on it. We went from leading South Florida to being behind them with a penalty imposed by the umpire," Legler said. "It was nothing South Florida did. It was our own unforced error, and it cost us that race."
Tufts did not fare well in the second race either. Haeger and his crew sailed too far down current from the starting line and were unable to catch up.
There was little wind on Saturday, which affected the schedule of the races.
"The regatta was shorter than we had hoped, and that positioned us to have the quarterfinal against Florida, which we screwed up," Legler said.
Following the loss to South Florida, Tufts beat Michigan and then clinched the fifth place spot with a victory over Wisconsin.
"We weren't happy with the weekend," Liebenberg said. "We were sloppy with our boat handling and our boat work. We made some mistakes, and it didn't go well for us. It was tough losing the way we did because we felt like we were one of the top few teams, and we felt like we beat ourselves."
Though the team did not perform to its expectations, the Jumbos did win nine of their 13 races, showing their cohesion. With the championship regatta marking the end of sloop racing until next year, coach Legler and the team are already getting excited about the prospects of next fall's success.
With Navy's team graduating, Tufts' main competition will come from Roger Williams, Boston College and Stanford. Next year's sloop nationals will be in Haeger's hometown of Chicago, where he has experience racing, which the team expects to give them a boost of energy and confidence.
"This was an all-sophomore team. We have tremendously talented sophomore back-ups as well," Legler said. "We're going to have a good first boat and a good training boat for years to come. So I think we're more determined than ever to come back."
