May 22, 2010
STANFORD, Calif.-- Stanford Sailing will travel to Lake Mendota in Madison, WI next week to compete at the Intercollegiate Sailing Association’s (ICSA) 2010 Nationals for the Women’s, Team Racing, and Coed Championships.
The ICSA Nationals, being hosted between May 25th and June 3rd by University of Wisconsin in collegiate 420s, will have live coverage of all three events at www.sailgroove.org, as well results posted on the official regatta website, http://2010nationals.collegesailing.org/.
Stanford is the only team from their district, the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference (PCCSC), to qualify for all the three national finals, as well as the only team West of New York to qualify for the Coed Championship. Stanford won all three divisions to advance to the next round.
The Women’s National Championship, held May 25-28, will have two events within itself. The first day and half of the event is an 18 team semifinal, while the final two and half-days are the 18 team national finals, with nine automatic berths coming from district champions, as well as nine from the semifinals.
Stanford is already in the finals with a win in April at the district qualifier in Long Beach. USC and Hawaii received the two semi-final spots from PCCSC.
Sailing for the Cardinal will be freshman Eliza Richartz skippering the “A” division and junior Hannah Burroughs skippering “B” division. Rebecca King, senior Megan Grove, competing in her final collegiate races, Hayley Tobin, and Iris Clayter will share crewing responsibilities.
Richartz, King, Burroughs, and Grove all earned All-PCCSC honors this spring and have been a dominant force within the PCCSC district, winning every PCCSC women’s event in the 2009-2010 season.
The APS Team Race Championship, held May 29-31, seeds the f14 pre-qualified teams into two groups for a single qualifying round robin. After each round robin the top four teams from each group will move onto the gold round, while the remaining six will sail a consolation round.
Stanford has been placed in group two and will compete against Boston College, Eckerd, Georgetown, Wisconsin, Navy, and Washington in their qualifying round.
Team racing is a unique form of racing that puts three Stanford boats versus three competitors boats. The competing teams must use tactics, strategy, and rules to cross the finish line with less combined points than their opponent.
The team race will be skippered by senior Peter Stemler, also competing in his final collegiate races, sophomores Justin Doane, Oliver Riihiluoma, Nick Dugdale, and junior Ben Pedrick. The crew will be made up of five upperclassmen, including: Katie Jewett, Tobin, Burroughs, Grove, and Katie Riklin, as well as Alex Dunlap and Clayter.
With weather conditions varying so much on Lake Mendota, the need for different skipper and crew weight combinations is great. While the Cardinal struggled early in the season at major team race intersectionals, they took that experience into their conference qualifiers in April and lost only one race the entire event, finishing 16-1 and winning yet another conference championship and berth to nationals.
The Gill Coed Dinghy Championship, held June 1-3, takes the top nine teams from the Eastern and Western SemiFinals to make a strong 18 team field.
Stanford won the PCCSC Coed Championship in Honolulu in April, which qualified them for Western Semifinals on May 1-2 in Seattle.
In Seattle, Doane and Jewett won the last “B” division race of the regatta to lock up ninth place, and the last qualifying spot for coed finals.
The Coed Championship has the same format as the women’s finals, a two-division event rotating boats and divisions after every two races.
Sailing for the Cardinal will be skippers Doane, Dugdale and Stemler, while the crews will be Jewett, Tobin, Burroughs, and Clayter.