ST. MARY'S CITY, Md. - For the third time this season, Stanford sailing was crowned as national champions following a victory at the ICSA Open Fleet Race Championships on Friday afternoon.
The Cardinal collected its second Open Fleet Race title, adding to its 2023 championship, marking the first time in program history that Stanford has won three national titles in the same season.
Stanford sailing now has eight national championships - 5 women's, 3 coed - winning seven of them in the last three seasons.
Competition began on Tuesday with a two-day semifinal round, as Stanford prevailed as the top team in the Western Semifinal with 82 points, eleven points ahead of runner-up Yale. The Cardinal was the lowest-scoring team across both semifinals, as Harvard won the Eastern Semifinal with 122 points.
The finals were set to commence on Thursday, but light wind conditions kept the boats off the water, and no races were sailed.
That left just one day of racing for a champion to be decided and the Cardinal capitalized, scoring 59 races across seven sets of races to win the national title. Navy finished in second with 75 points, followed by 92 points from third-place Dartmouth.
Thomas Sitzmann and Ellie Harned led the A division with a pair of race wins and two more runner-up finishes, good for a division-leading 34 points.
Vanessa Lahrkamp and Alice Schmid also delivered a strong showing in the B division with 25 points, finishing in the top two in each of the final four races to help seal the victory for Stanford.
Lucas Woodworth, Reade Decker, Ashtyn Tierney, and Piper Blackband also competed for the Cardinal throughout the week in St. Mary's City.
Stanford varsity teams have now won 172 national championships overall (77 men, 92 women, 3 coed). This is Stanford's fifth national team title overall of the 2024-25 campaign and the third from the sailing program, which also won the ICSA Women's Team Race and ICSA Women's Fleet Race championships. The Cardinal has also secured national crowns in Artistic Swimming and Women's Water Polo