May 18, 2011
STANFORD, Calif.-- Stanford sailing will head up to the Hood River, an hour outside of Portland for the week-long national championships starting on Monday, May 23. The Cardinal will compete in the women's, team and coed races.
In preparation for the windy conditions on the Hood River, the Cardinal has spent the previous two weeks sailing along side the Golden Gate Bridge, rather than their home, Redwood Shores, course.
The women begin sailing on May 23. Stanford has competed in this national women's race in eight of the last nine years. It finished 13th of 18 teams last year.
The Cardinal, based on their Pacific Coast Conference Sailing Conference finish, are already into the championship round, which is likely to begin either mid-day on May 24 or May 25. The Cardinal are currently ranked No. 9 nationally on the women's side.
All-conference women's skippers, Eliza Richartz, Sally Mace and Molly McKinney led the Cardinal to the PCCSC title, with Anna McConnell and Katie Riklin serving as crew members. All five sailors are underclassmen, as Richartz and Riklin are the “veteran” sophomore sailors.
In addition, Mace and McKinney skippered the Cardinal to a third place showing in mid-April at a national tuneup in Connecticut, featuring most of the top teams.
The team's race will run from May 27 to 29, with the Cardinal placing ninth last year and seventh in John Vandemoer's first season as head coach.
The team race, featuring 14 teams, will each send three boats out on the water, of which the lowest combined score between each team will determine a win-loss record. Stanford were PCCSC team champions in each of the last four years. Stanford went 14-1 against the PCCSC field in mid-April, paced by skippers Mateo Vargas, Kevin Laube and Oliver Toole.
The coed race will conclude things from May 30 to June 1. Stanford has raced in the national coed race every year since 2002, finishing as high as seventh in 2005. It was a disappointing 18th last year. Stanford finished sixth at one of two national semifinals earlier this month after also winning the PCCSC coed title for the second-straight year. The Cardinal are ranked No. 10 nationally.
Vargas and Rebecca King made up one team at the semifinals, while Laube and Kelly Ortel made up the other team. Vargas and Laube were both all-conference coed skippers as freshmen.
Vandemoer is no stranger to the national meet, having coached teams at the national championships in each of his five years as a head coach-- 2007 and 2008 while with Navy and since 2010 with Stanford. Just one of this three sets of teams has ever not qualified for nationals, the 2008 Navy coed team.