A College Sailor's Life: We Can't Wait to Get our Rings!

Kelly and her teammates last weekend at Dartmouth.

By Kelly Stannard

This weekend I am happy to say I am staying in Rhode Island to race at Brown University, and competing for the Hoyt Trophy. This makes getting back to Roger Williams Saturday night a breeze! It is homecoming weekend on our campus and Saturday night the University is honoring our National Championship win at the ICSA/Gill Team Race Nationals in June. We will be receiving championship rings (well maybe ring pops until the rings arrive), while being acknowledged by the campus community, parents and friends.

Our team will be taking the same crew from last weekend to the Hoyt Trophy hosted at Brown, Alec Anderson, Sophie Bellacosa, Tyler Wilson (all three were NEISA sailors of the week for helping us win at Dartmouth last weekend) Sean Bouchard, Jake Bartlein and me. We are hoping that the six of us can keep the momentum rolling from our win last weekend and perform similarly tomorrow and Sunday!

For those of you who don’t know, Brown’s sailing facility has been Edgewood Yacht Club for years. Unfortunately, a tragic fire destroyed the historic club in January of this year. Not only did this have a tremendous impact on the Edgewood Yacht Club’s members it directly affected the Brown sailing team.

I talked with Colin Smith, a junior on the Brown University team about what it has been like this year and the impact its had on the team. The team had locker rooms on the bottom floor of the Edgewood Yacht Club where they stored their personal sailing gear. “The major bummer was that we lost thousands of dollars worth of gear. Everyone on the team was affected whether it was losing a pair of boots or all their private sailing equipment. The school has been very supportive and in the next few years we hope to have a new permanent facility that should be one of the best in college sailing,” explained Colin.

For the Brown team, “initially it was pretty tough after the fire,” he reflected, “we would have to change in our cars and couldn't get out of the elements. After a month or so of roughing it, the school bought us a large portable building that we use.” This portable building gave them some shelter from the chilly Rhode Island weather throughout the spring season.

I’m glad to report the Brown team has been able to prevail through this tragedy and they are looking forward to hosting the Hoyt this weekend!

My fellow Hawks are also competing at the ladies event at Connecticut College (the Stu Nelson), a team is going to the Oberg hosted by Harvard and we’ll have a team racing at home for the Southern Series event.