NEW LONDON, Conn. – This weekend, the No. 2 Bulldogs won the BC Team Race at Savin Hill Yacht Club and placed second at the Friis Trophy at the US Coast Guard Academy, where the New England Team Race National Qualifier will take place in just two weeks. Several underclassmen contributed significantly to these impressive results.
The winning team in Boston consisted of skippers senior Eric Anderson, sophomores Christopher Champa and Casey Klingler and freshman Nick Hernandez with crews juniors Amelia Dobronyi, Isabelle Rossi de Leon and Charles Skoda.
Because only six teams were competing, the race committee was able to complete the regatta in just one day with two full round robins. Breeze ranged from 5 to 15 knots on Saturday with considerable chop due to strong uphill current.
Skoda attributed the team's success to good starts; he said, "Because we got off the line in most races we were able to sail fast and minimize the amount of team racing we needed to do."
Also important to note is the large number of upperclassmen who sailed the event – two sophomores and one freshman skippered; they proved their high skill level and steep learning curve, which gets higher every day they sail.
The Bulldogs won the regatta with an 11-4 record, winning a tiebreaker with Hobart and William Smith.
At the Coast Guard Academy, skippers junior Ian Barrows, junior captain Mitchell Kiss, sophomore Malcolm Lamphere and freshman Nic Baird with crews senior Charlotte Belling and juniors Natalya Doris, Chandler Gregoire and Clara Robertson earned a second-place finish.
The event saw a variety of wind conditions – on both days, the breeze started out in the range of 3-7 knots and later on shifted to an 8-13 knot southerly. The wide range of wind velocity allowed for a variety of skipper-crew combinations as well as team combinations.
The Bulldogs sat in fourth after day one but learned a lot from their strategic and boat handling mistakes and quickly turned things around on Sunday. They did not lose a single race on the second day of the regatta, even sailing a final four (which was unable to be completed due to time constraints) with skippers Baird, Lamphere and Kiss – two sophomores and one junior – a team combination that the Bulldogs rarely practice.
Had the final four, in which they won all three races, been completed, the Bulldogs would have won the event.
However, as captain Kiss explains, at this point in the season, "the team is focused on learning," rather than results. He furthers, "we learned from the small errors we were making at the beginning of the regatta and cleaned things up by the end. We have two more weeks to learn as much as we possibly can in preparation for the qualifiers and we're really excited to keep the momentum going."
Commenting on the changes in the team's sailing between Saturday and Sunday, Barrows said, "there were vast improvements in our boat speed and boat handling. This weekend was great preparation for the national qualifier."
To see full results from this weekend, visit http://scores.collegesailing.org/s16/. Next weekend, the Bulldogs are competing in three events, two in Boston and one in New London, Conn.
Report filed by Natalya Doris '17, Yale Sports Publicity
