May 22, 2012
STANFORD, Calif.-- Stanford Sailing heads into its final events of the year, the national championships outside Austin, Texas starting on May 30, with a strong chance to be named the nation's top sailing program.
The Cardinal are coming off a season where they dominated the West Coast, winning an unprecedented six conference titles-- a league first.
Stanford enters the final three events in second place in the Fowle Trophy, given to the program with the best overall sailing score in men's and women's singlehanded sailing, match racing, and the spring championships of coed, women's and team racing.
The national championships will also be webcast and have video highlights each day off of the collegesailing.org website.
Yale has a slim lead with 33.76 points, followed by Stanford's 30.93 points. Stanford is scheduled to compete in all three championships, Yale is entered in just two. Brown (26.94 points), College of Charleston (26.28), South Florida (25.79) and Hobart and William Smith College (23.83) round out the top-five.
During the fall, Kaitlyn Baab and Molly McKinney finished tenth and 11th in women's singlehanded racing, while Mateo Vargas (fourth) and Kieran Chung-Wolf (11th) were in the top-15 on the men's side, giving the Cardinal 26 percent of the final tally. Also during the fall, the Cardinal finished third in match racing for 5.6 points and seven percent of the vote.
Stanford's third place showing at the coed semifinals last week garnered another nine percent of the vote and eight points.
The majority of the points are still out there, as coed racing (18 percent), women's racing (20 percent) and team racing (20 percent) make up 58 percent of the remaining points.
Teams in contention for the Fowle Trophy, and also in all three national finals are Stanford, Brown, Hobart College, Boston College and Georgetown. Boston College is in eighth place (20) and Georgetown (18.39) is in ninth.
The national championships are May 30-June 8 at Lake Travis in Texas, starting with the women and continuing with team racing and finishing off with coed sailing.
*Schedule:*
Sperry Top-Sider / ICSA Women's National Semifinals – May 30-31
• Video highlights Thursday, May 31
Sperry Top-Sider / ICSA Women's National Championship – June 1-2
• Video highlights both days
ICSA / APS Team Race Nationals – June 3-5
• Video highlights Sunday, June 3
• Live streaming video June 4-5
ICSA / Gill Dinghy Nationals – June 6-8
• Text and photo updates all three days
• Television broadcast on ESPNU at a later date