ST. MARY'S COLLEGE, MD — Over the weekend, collegiate sailors played a different game as they contested the national team racing honors in the waters off St. Mary's College. Though light winds and numerous delays marred the final day of competition, the host team successfully defended its title at the ICYRA Ronstan North American Team Race Championship. Sailed in the college's fleet of Flying Juniors, the competition featured 12 schools that had qualified to send a three-boat team.
Despite the sometimes frustrating conditions, all 66 round-robin races were completed, which left a two-way tie for first and third places and a three-way tie for first. With too little time remaining to conduct the scheduled final-four segment, the organizers opted for a series of tiebreaker races to determine the top seven overall finishers.
St. Mary's College was tied with Georgetown University for first with win-loss records of 10-1. Harvard, which had been in the hunt before losing a critical race to St. Mary's, tied with Dartmouth for third, each with 9-2 records, and with records of 6-5 each, the University of Southern California, Stanford, and the College of Charleston were tied for fifth.
The first tiebreaker race featured Harvard and Dartmouth, and Harvard secured an early lead and never looked back in winning third place overall. In the second race for the regatta title and the Walter C. Wood Trophy, St. Mary's initiated some aggressive pre-start maneuvering with Georgetown and suffered a disadvantage when one of its boats started prematurely and had to restart. Though St. Mary's never caught up to the speedy Georgetown sailors, the team won its protest against Georgetown for an infringement during the pre-start maneuvers and claimed the regatta victory. USC won its tiebreaker races against Stanford and Charleston to take fifth place, and Stanford beat Charleston in the final race to capture sixth place.
Representing St. Mary's College were skippers Ty Reed (Ocean Beach, CA.), Chris Gaffney (Miami, FL) and Anthony Kotoun (St. Thomas, VI), with Molly Curtiss (Lake Forest, IL), Erin Sheridan (Columbia, MD) and Jane DeLashmutt (Hillsboro, VA) crewing.
The ICYRA Coed Dinghy North American Championship is currently underway at the US Merchant Marine Academy in Kings Point, NY. For full results, log on to www.collegesailing.org