US SAILING Blog

Daily Lift

2012-02-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Budgeting tip by Leslie Keller - Ten easy steps to budget for your sailing program. Define objectives, gather information, identify fixed costs, program details, calculate program costs, calculate program revenues, assemble, add extras, tweak as needed and monitor.

Daily Lift

2012-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Sail trim tip by Bill Gladstone - For a given wind speed, a deeper more twisted sail shape is preferred in big waves or chop. A flatter, less twisted shape is better in smooth water. Same total power, but a different mix.

Daily Lift

2012-02-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Maddox on lightweight rope fiber - Polypropylene is a lightweight fiber that is also cheap. Not only does it float, but refuses to absorb water too. It is not very strong and is subject to stretch. It deteriorates quickly in the sun. Polypropylene melts at low temperatures and is subject to damage or failure caused by frictional heat.

Daily Lift

2012-02-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

Fundraising tip: Guilt doesn't work. The majority of donors resent the use of guilt tactics. Show them how their gift can make a positive impact.

Daily Lift

2012-02-22T09:00:00.000-05:00

Susan Nahmias gives us a tip on how to keep sailors interested and involved... Make sailing relevant to the world around them by building connections, facilitate discussion of these sailing connections and the importance of mentoring at yacht clubs, community sailing groups, one-design fleets, etc.

Daily Lift

2012-02-21T00:00:00.000-05:00

Club management tip by Gary Jobson: Does your club need a decoration makeover? Focus on your club heritage: paintings, burgees, pictures, showcase trophies, and honor Commodores.

Daily Lift

2012-02-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

Racing tip by Dave Perry: The key to defending your hole is to be a “pitbull” about it. This is no time to be a nice guy. Being “nice” will get you nothing but a reputation! You need to be prepared to aggressively defend your hole. One way is to post a lookout, someone on your boat needs to be assigned the task of watching for potential attackers.

Daily Lift

2012-02-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Rope facts by Steve Maddox - Natural fibers are generally are used for traditional boat rigging. Typically these are hemp, manila, sisal, and cotton. Ropes made from the natural fibers are subject to rot. There are now several synthetic ropes that look like natural hemp.

Daily Lift

2012-02-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Fundraising tip: When talking to donors you should also encourage their attendance at events and participation in related programs. Involving prospects with the organization will lead to increased financial support.

Going Varsity

2012-02-15T10:52:00.000-05:00

An interview with former George Washington University sailor Will Ricketson
by Jake Fish

It is important to take a look back at how far the sport of college sailing has come for so many programs around the county. One program in particular welcomed in the new year with outstanding news. After years of self evaluation, perseverance and dedication, on and off the water, the George Washington University sailing team has achieved varsity status.

Will Ricketson, a 2011 George Washington graduate and four-year member of the sailing team, led the charge throughout this extensive process of transitioning this program from club to varsity. The move is part of a strategic plan by the university to bolster its athletic programs.

Ricketson served as a coordinator for the first-ever US Sailing Road Show last summer and is now Olympic Coordinator for the US Sailing Team AlphaGraphics. US Sailing caught up with Ricketson to discuss the development of George Washington sailing as a varsity program and what it took to make this a reality.

US Sailing: Where did the idea to go from club to varsity come from? Why was it important to go varsity?

Ricketson: By the time I was a senior at GW in 2011, we had already made great strides as a club team. In 2007, we had about a dozen sailors, no equipment, and were ranked near the bottom of the 45-team MAISA conference. By 2011, we had over 30 dedicated athletes, a new fleet, a coach boat, team van, and had made it to two consecutive co-ed conference championships and the Women's ACC's. However, we seemed to have reached a performance ceiling. We were faster than most of our fellow club teams, but struggled against the majority of our varsity competitors. We decided that the logical next step was to see if we could take our team to the next level. For us, that meant varsity status.

US Sailing: What are the main differences between club and varsity programs?

Ricketson: The differences are almost too many to count, on both physical and psychological levels. As a club team, our primary goal as an organization often seemed like survival, rather than winning. Money was tight, especially after we acquired a brand new fleet in 2009. We were 100% student run. It's hard to focus on how to beat tremendous varsity programs when you're worried that your fleet might vanish if you don't scrape together enough money for marina fees each semester. Having a full-time varsity coach to instill discipline, improve performance, oversee financial issues and recruit new talent is by far the most important difference.

US Sailing: Was there a demand for varsity sailing at GW?

Ricketson: Yes. Before I submitted our plan to GW, I talked with the team to make sure everyone was one board. We knew that much more would be expected of our athletes should our varsity proposal be approved. It immediately became clear that we already considered ourselves a varsity team in all but name, based on the level of effort and time we put into sailing. We strived to match Georgetown's venerable program hour-for-hour in terms of practice. So in that sense, there was a great demand.

US Sailing: Where did you start the process of leading the charge in achieving varsity status?

Ricketson: First we sat down with the Senior Vice President of GW, Dr. Robert Chernak. He helpfully advised us on what issues would need to be resolved in order for a varsity sailing program to be considered. We then did enormous amounts of research, and worked closely with several of the most knowledgeable varsity coaches from around the country to construct our case. Guys like Jay Sterne (ICSA Graduate Secretary) Mike Callahan (Georgetown), Mitch Brindley (Old Dominion, ICSA President) and Adam Werblow (St. Mary's) spent many hours of their time helping us, and enthusiastically lobbied on our behalf. We are extremely grateful for their support.

US Sailing: What were the significant challenges you were faced with?

Ricketson: We needed to make the case that adding sailing to GW Athletics would not only make sense for our team, but for the school as a whole. Luckily, we had already proved ourselves to be reasonably competitive and visible within MAISA. After that, we relied on the many inherent advantages that college sailing enjoys, like Title IX neutrality, relatively low annual cost compared to some other sports, small footprint on existing facilities, and more. The list of pros, happily, is long. The sport of sailing, in my opinion, translates extremely well to college athletics.

US Sailing: What university channels did you need to connect with? What type of interactions did you have with the athletic department and other university officials?

Ricketson: Developing solid relationships with all levels of the administration was key. It was tempting at times to push back against officials and get frustrated when we ran into misperceptions or indifference regarding our sport. However, we were able to keep the dialogue positive, and eventually won over many of the administrators at GW. Several became active fans of our team, since we made them feel like they had a stake in our success. Everybody loves an underdog story, after all!

US Sailing: How long did this process take?

Ricketson: The process of creating and submitting the proposal took several months. However, reshaping ourselves into a program that really focused on intercollegiate racing, rather than recreation, took about 2-3 years.

US Sailing: What are your recommendations to other college sailing programs that are going through this process or considering it?

Ricketson: Before you ask your school for help or improved status, adopt a varsity mindset on your own. Show that you can be both competitive on the water, and responsible off it. Recruit hard and promote hard. Take pictures, shoot video. Do your best to create an image of your team that the school will find attractive. If they can see something already in existence that closely resembles a varsity program, especially if alumni and parents are enthusiastically involved, it is a much easier sell. Work hard first, and then carefully pick your moment to make a proposal. The main thing is to avoid asking for too much too soon, and get off to a bad start with your athletic department leaders.

US Sailing: What will the program have access to now? What are the benefits?

Ricketson: GW University has an excellent NCAA Division 1 athletic department. We will be fully integrated into their administrative structure, which will ensure the professionalism and stability of the program going forward. We have had a lot of success with our current structure of student leadership, but as the team became more ambitious in its goals, the strains on those student leaders became more intense. Attaining varsity status will allow our athletes to once again focus their attention towards on-the-water performance and their class work. We honestly have a great deal of respect for the leaders of our athletic department, and can't wait to work with them. We are extremely proud of the team that we built, and wouldn't entrust it to people who wouldn't take good care of it. I believe that the sky is the limit in terms of our future performance.

US Sailing: Who played a big role in making this happen?

Ricketson: Almost too many people to count. First and foremost, our athletes (and their families) who showed such unbelievable dedication to the team when the idea of varsity status wasn't even on the radar. We also had an experienced coach, Jay Sterne, freely offer a great deal of his time in terms of event coaching and administrative advice. Our school officials, especially GW Vice President Dr. Robert Chernak, GW Athletic Director Patrick Nero, Assistant AD's Jason Wilson and Brian Hamluk, team faculty advisor Joe Bondi and Recreation Sports Director Aubre Jones. The whole MAISA conference community has our thanks as well for lending us endless amounts of helpful support.

Finally, we owe an immense debt to the Georgetown Sailing Team and Head Coach Mike Callahan. They literally took us in off the street when we lost access (from lack of funds) to our old, rented fleet of FJ's in 2008. They allowed us to use their boats until we raised enough money for our own, and even integrated us into their daily drills. Their encouragement allowed us to believe that we could become competitive. I hope the two teams remain close partners and friendly rivals long into the future.

Daily Lift

2012-02-15T08:50:00.000-05:00

Things to consider when planning a junior regatta: competitor ability, size of fleet, venue, average wind speed and safety boat/ competitor ratio.

Daily Lift

2012-02-14T00:00:00.000-05:00

Help set goals for your child by Jessica Moehler - Building a family mission statement can be facilitated by answering two questions:

1. When my child is 21 years old, what kind of person do I want him or her to be, and how will sports help us, as parents, get our child there?

2. What are the three most important virtues or lessons that I want my child to learn through involvement in sports?

Daily Lift

2012-02-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

A racing tip from Dave Perry - If you are on port tack, be as selective as possible about the boat you choose to tack in to leeward of. When you make that tack, be sure to start low enough that you end up solidly overlapped with the new windward boat, as opposed to being too far forward and not securely pinning that boat.

Daily Lift

2012-02-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

Do you have an iPhone or an Android phone? Search for the "Racing Rules of Sailing" to download the rulebook application to your phone! http://bit.ly/wa9oBI

Daily Lift

2012-02-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Steve Maddox asks, why splice a line? Knots weaken rope by up to 60% while splices retain 90-100% of the line's strength.

Daily Lift

2012-02-08T00:00:00.000-05:00

College Sailing Tip by Jay Kehoe - Are you a high school senior applying to college and not sure how to contact the school’s sailing coach? Here are some tips: contact the coach before you come for a visit, send them your sailing resume, personal resume and grades, ask if you can attend a class in a subject that interest you while visiting, put together a careful letter to the coach explaining why you are interested in their school, look at schools that interest you BEYOND sailing, and remember to send a thank you note after your visit.

Daily Lift

2012-02-07T00:00:00.000-05:00

Parenting youth sailors tip by Jessica Moehler: While elementary school children are discovering their likes and dislikes, exposing them to a wide range of activities is ideal, including singlehanded and doublehanded dinghies, big boats, cruising and racing.

Daily Lift

2012-02-06T00:00:00.000-05:00

Tips on how to make team racing successful from Joel Hanneman: First rule of thumb is that the fun is in the action on the water. So everything about the event should be geared towards promoting the visual team elements, physical sailing requirements, and the overall visceral impact of a close, hard-fought race. This relates to everything from equipment, event format and location, to the PRO.

Daily Lift

2012-02-03T00:00:00.000-05:00

Don’t be afraid to make changes to long-running events. The best events are scalable from year-to-year depending on sponsorship and number of participants.

Daily Lift

2012-02-02T00:00:00.000-05:00

Not all kids who learn to sail Optimist Dinghies will want to race… and that’s OK! But, every kid should have the opportunity to experience the extra-friendly introductory part of Opti racing, before entering the “competitive” fleets, known as Green Fleet. It’s a great way to become a better sailor and add another exciting dimension to the sport. - Tom Coleman

Daily Lift

2012-02-01T00:00:00.000-05:00

Looking for summer sailing instructors? There are a number of websites that advertise job openings for yacht clubs looking to hire junior sailing program instructors, including the Sail1Design site.

Daily Lift

2012-01-31T00:00:00.000-05:00

Racing tip from Bill Gladstone: Aim toward the finish. More boats win races with this simple strategy than any other. Don’t over think the strategy. Until you have a good reason to do something else just aim toward the finish.

College Sailors, Tell US Sailing why you Deserve a New Drysuit from Gill!

2012-01-30T09:53:00.000-05:00

Attention College Sailors!
Create a two minute video, while wearing your team gear, on why YOU deserve a new drysuit.

Here is how it works...

1 - Upload your video to YouTube AND embed it onto the US Sailing Facebook Wall.

2 - The video with the most "Likes" and "Comments" will win a new Gill's new Drysuit. Which is available in Men's, Women's and Youth sizes.

3 - This contest opens Monday, January 30 and concludes Friday March 2.

4 - The winner will be announced on Tuesday, March 6.

What is the US Sailing College Membership?
US Sailing offers a four year college membership for $95. This is a savings of 60% off the basic individual membership price. This special membership is good for four years from the date of purchase regardless of when you graduate. Remember... Certified Instructors (levels 1 and 2) are required to have an adult membership for insurance purposes, and a US Sailing college membership fulfills this requisite.

Disclaimer
By entering into this contest, you give US Sailing permission to promote your video through their communication and social media channels. This prize is non-transferable and is not redeemable for cash or a cash value. The contest is open to current college sailors. In the event of a tie, US Sailing will decide the winner.

Daily Lift

2012-01-30T00:00:00.000-05:00

“It can be a strong racing club, a strong cruising club, a strong social club, a strong junior club or a strong adult education club. Any club can focus on several of these areas, but a club needs an identity.” – Dave Perry

Daily Lift

2012-01-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Race management tip from Ken Taylor - Regatta Network typically recommends opening registration for regattas & events 8 to 12 weeks before the event date.

Daily Lift

2012-01-26T00:00:00.000-05:00

US Sailing Fact! A total of 385 sailors from 185 clubs and associations attended US Sailing's inaugural 2011 Yacht Club Summit in Chicago.

Daily Lift

2012-01-25T00:00:00.000-05:00

A tip for sailing organizations from Clay Deutsch: A key component of creating and sustaining a unique experience for members is to continuously update and maintain facilities.

Daily Lift

2012-01-24T00:00:00.000-05:00

"Regardless of whether there are three boats starting or 30 or 130, the only two boats that really matter to you right off the starting line are the boats just to windward and to leeward of you. I call these boats my neighbors. Therefore, one of the secrets to getting a good start is picking your neighbors wisely." - Dave Perry

Daily Lift

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000-05:00

A tip for sailing organizations by Gary Jobson: If you have a club owned fleet, create lessons for all age groups not just the kids. Adult learn-to-sail programs invigorate your local sailing communities.

Reflections from Key West Race Week

2012-01-22T21:11:00.001-05:00

By Kelly Stannard

What a week! There were countless amounts of “firsts” for me last week, other then our scores that is. It was my first time sailing a Melges 24, first time meeting my teammates, first time to Key West, my first win at Race Week, and my first time being recognized as Sailing Anarchy’s Chick of the Week! Oh, and I almost forgot, the first time I was nicknamed, "Biscuit."

Now that my brief retreat to turquoise water and sunscreen in January has come to a close I am headed back to my house in Connecticut for a day or two before I return to Rhode Island to start classes. It’s hard to leave a place like Key West and go back to the snowy Northeast!

The week couldn’t have been more fun. I’m ecstatic that I got to sail with such a talented team, Bora Gulari, Jeremy Wilmot, Same Rogers and Andrew Wills. Our sponsors, West Marine Rigging, New England Ropes, and North Sails were also essential in our victory in Key West Race Week. I hadn’t imagined my first “big boat” event would have gone so well. I guess you could say I am one-for-one right now.

Now I am home and reflecting on how great of a week I had and am ready for a nap before I have to jump back into school, work and before I know it, the college sailing season!

Daily Lift

2012-01-20T00:00:00.000-05:00

“When you have ten people running a race management team, each has a different opinion. A good team will head toward the same goal. Or, since we’re sailors, toward the same windward mark.” - Dean Brenner

Daily Lift

2012-01-19T00:00:00.000-05:00

Need some tips on how to maintain and repair your Gelcoat? Check out these tips from Sturgis Boat Works.

Daily Lift

2012-01-18T00:00:00.000-05:00

Tips to improve your yacht club's communication practice from Gary Jobson: Hire a communications director, produce high end newsletters (consider digital/email versions), host a user-friendly website and keep it updated, send e-mail reminders, and foster relationships with local media.

A Great Start to Key West Race Week

2012-01-17T17:35:00.000-05:00

By Kelly Stannard

Key West has been kind to me so far. All around I’ve had a wonderful time down here. Racing is exciting and close, and the social scene has also been a blast. I must say I’m incredibly lucky that Bora (Gulari) and the team asked me to come down to crew with them in the regatta. Everyone on the team has been great and supportive when it comes to getting me up to speed and teaching me what I need to know to about sailing a Melges 24. I've even acquired a new nick name... Biscuit. I’ve grown to become quite fond of.

It helps when you are learning from the best. I can’t think of a better way to spend the week before my last semester of senior year starts.

We’ve had terrific finishes. We have five bullets in the first five races! It doesn’t get any better than that. Yesterday the forecast came through as promised with excellent breeze for day one. The team was pumped to get out there and get racing after the few days of practice. We flew out of the gate sprinting and pulled in two first place finishes. We won racing for the day and were able to edge out our closest competition, Blu Moon. Our sponsors, North Sales, West Marine Rigging, and New England Ropes, have also played a key role in our success.

Today, the breeze was a little lighter than yesterday and much warmer. Tomorrow’s forecast doesn’t look ideal, so the race committee made the decision to push the start time an hour forward and we sailed three races today. I was thankful for the warmer weather and was able to just wear shorts, which I haven’t had the luxury to do since day one of practice. It allowed for me to get some sort of tan on my pale New England winter skin, well maybe more like a slight sunburn but I’m not complaining.

Follow all the action this week in "the Keys" on the event website.

Daily Lift

2012-01-17T00:00:00.000-05:00

Race preparation tip from Bill Gladstone: Gather weather information from every available source. Stay away from high pressure, and position yourself to take advantage of new breeze, but beware of sailing the forecast instead of the wind, or you may find yourself in perfect position for a weather change that happens later than expected (or never happens).

Getting Ready for Key West Race Week

2012-01-16T09:23:00.003-05:00

by Kelly Stannard

We are inbetween college sailing seasons, and I've been lucky enough to make it down to Key West Race Week and compete on Melges 24s with and against some great sailors.

Key West is a long way from Rhode Island and I've got to say, the weather is much more enjoyable right about now. Not having to scrape the frost off the car in the morning or wear mittens has been a treat. I've gladly traded those things in for some shorts and lots of sailing for the week.

I flew in on Thursday night and met up with my teammates including, Bora Gulari, Jeremy Wilmot, Sam Rogers, and Andrew Wills. Bora, a former Moth World Champion and US Sailing Rolex Yachtsman of the Year, asked me to race with their team this week. I was honored to accept this offer. What an amazing opportunity!

We have spent the last few days getting the boat and ourselves ready to go for Monday, and the remainder of the week. We've successfully weighed in, settled into our beautiful condo, tested sails and worked on our boat handling. The last part for me has been fun and quite the learning experience. I have had never been on a Melges 24 before the first day if practice.

While practicing these last few days we've seen conditions from relatively light breeze the first day, to some gusts in the low 20s yesterday. Looking into the week the forecast looks great today and tomorrow, expecting to see 15 to 20 getting lighter going into Wednesday. Racing starts today, wish us luck!

Follow all the action this week in "the Keys" on the event website.

Daily Lift

2012-01-16T00:00:00.000-05:00

Parenting youth sailors tip: While elementary school children are discovering their likes and dislikes, exposing them to a wide range of activities is ideal, including singlehanded and doublehanded dinghies, big boats, cruising and racing. - Jessica Moehler

Daily Lift

2012-01-13T00:00:00.000-05:00

Managing the Protest Process - The best way to manage the protest process is by having a set procedure and follow it closely. Getting more members involved in running races pays off in the long run. The only way to become a skilled race officer is to learn by making the tough calls yourself. - Tom Duggan

Daily Lift

2012-01-12T00:00:00.000-05:00

Junior Program Recruiting Tip - Since many instructors are college students, it is crucial to pay attention to the college sailing season. Don’t start your program until the college sailing season wraps up and end it early enough to let them get ready to return for the fall season. - Chip Johns

Daily Lift

2012-01-11T00:00:00.000-05:00

The club website is a great way to reach members, but often if a club stops mailing a monthly printed calendar, attendance drops. Families often post the calendar as a reminder for club events, so hard-copy publications still can play an important role in a communications plan. - Kurt Stocker

Daily Lift

2012-01-10T00:00:00.000-05:00

In a race, get back to your game plan as quickly as possible. If your original game plan was to go left, you are looking to tack onto starboard as soon as you can be reasonably sure you will have clear air for several minutes. If you originally wanted to go right and are doing so on port tack, great! If it is a shifty day, get onto the lifted tack as quickly as possible, even if it means sailing in some slightly disturbed air or water. - Dave Perry

Daily Lift

2012-01-09T00:00:00.000-05:00

Welcome to US Sailing's Daily Lift!

The Daily Lift is designed to give sailors quick tips on a variety of sailing topics, from ideas on how to improve your sailing organization to racing strategies, and from coaching tactics to interesting US Sailing facts, and much more.

Visit the US Sailing Blog Monday through Friday to get your Daily Lift.

Here is your first Daily Lift:

Parents can help their junior sailors by setting the right goals, taking cues from your child to develop success, building confidence and character through sailing, encouraging and setting limits for performance excellence, and by communicating with your child’s instructors or coaches. - Jessica Mohler

College Fall Season is Over… So What do we do now?

2011-12-08T11:36:00.000-05:00

By: Kelly Stannard

The season has been wrapped up for just over three weeks and college sailors are now preparing for Finals. What in the world do we do with our extra time?

I reached out to some fellow college sailors from programs around the country to get a feel for what teams do after the season is over. I got the chance to talk to team members from College of Charleston, Hawaii, Yale, Vermont, Brown, Georgetown, Boston College, Wisconsin, Oregon, and Stanford. As it turns out, our offseason schedules are similar. Yes, we do have our team meetings and training. However, we get the opportunity to catch up with friends, prepare for Finals, relax and recuperate, and do some personal sailing. Each team has their own little twist. So I asked these sailors what they do during the offseason? Here is the scoop from a handful of sailors representing various college sailing programs around the county.

College of Charleston – Mac Mace (Senior / Newport Beach, Calif.)
No more scheduled practices, no more early morning workouts. We are left with ample time to do school work and spend time with the friends that we don’t see during the season.

We try to get some team members together to do our own workouts in the offseason. These workouts consist of riding the bike, lifting weights, playing pick-up basketball, squash, going for a run, beach soccer and of course some highly competitive games of four square.

Hawaii - Bree Nidds (Junior / Lenoir, N.C.)
We have a team bonding trip planned where the team will be kayaking out to a local spot called the “Chinaman's Hat”. We plan to have challenges out on the water between skippers and crews. When we reach the island, we hike to the top and take our team photo.

We have team workouts that are voluntary. Staying active and in shape is definitely promoted during the season and the offseason.

Yale - Joe Morris (Senior / Annapolis, Md.)
Once our season wraps up we have a bit of time off. Finals tend to be a really hectic period for us, just like everywhere else, so we try not to put too much stress on everyone immediately after the season.

The team racers, along with anyone else who want to participate, often meet on their own to informally talk things over and watch video. We've found it's very useful to have the upperclassmen teaching the newer sailors over the winter.

Vermont - Sara Anibal (Sophomore / Greenwich, Conn.)
We are responsible to go to the gym on our own or with someone else on the team at least twice a week. The team put our boats away on the last day of practice, so we don’t get the chance to go out and get some extra practice after our last weekend. When the lake thaws in the spring, we can start our practices.

Brown - Colin Smith (Junior / Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.)
We don't have any official scheduled workouts during the season and we don't have anything in the winter. Everyone continues to work out on our own, although we do have an intramural hockey team.

A few of us are headed to Florida to do Vanguard 15 Midwinters, so we will get a good few days of fun sailing during the off season. Everyone usually tries to do some personal sailing over the winter break.

Georgetown - Peter Johns (Senior / Osterville, Mass.)
Our off-season has been filled with both sailing-related and non-sailing activities. We have continued our weekly workouts with our varsity weight coaches, and many of us have supplemented these workouts with cross-training during our free time, ranging from squash to swimming and everything in between.

We will be starting team meetings led by captains upon our return to campus in January; they will focus largely on team racing, including specifics on plays and boat handling.

Boston College - Annie Haeger (Senior / Lake Forest, Ill.)
Every week we have three weight lifting requirements and in the spring, we have team lifts. We also have weekly meetings where we try to get a head start into the team race season. We talk about different plays and strategy. The offseason is also great team bonding time, so bowling is always amusing.

Wisconsin - George Kutschenreuter (Sophomore / East Troy, Wis.)
Right before our last regatta, usually near thanksgiving, the entire team takes the docks out of the water and stores the boats for the winter during practice time. At this point in the year, Lake Mendota could begin to freeze any day. The team gets no outside assistance with this process. It is an exceptional workout and bonding experience for all of us.

Oregon - Philip Gordon (Senior / Missoula, Mont.)
Winter term sailing schedule is pretty relaxed for us until the beginning of February. We have weekly team meetings to watch videos and discuss team racing. This is a time for us to introduce plays to newer members.

Most of the members use winter term to spend more time on class, taking more classes or harder classes than they would in the fall or spring.

Stanford - Mateo Vargos (Sophomore / Treasure Island, Fla.)
We continue to have workouts with our trainers on Tuesday and Thursday mornings before class, and these remain mandatory until the spring season officially starts.

The team definitely does relax a bit more when time allows and I know myself and a few of the other guys often go surfing when would usually be practicing.

College Sailing: A Q&A with West Coast Sailors

2011-11-17T15:21:00.001-05:00

By Kelly Stannard

This week I sat down with two of my teammates at Roger Williams University from the West Coast and they discussed what it was like growing up sailing in the Pacific. I also picked their brains about the differences between East Coast and West Coast style sailing. Meet Annie Schmidt (Sophomore / San Francisco, Calif.)
and George Saunders (Senior / San Diego, Calif.).

Kelly: What boats did you grow up sailing?

Annie: I grew up sailing El Toros and Bytes. El Toros are like Sabots, but they don’t have a leeboard. They have a centerboard and a Byte which is basically like a smaller laser, both are one person boats.
George: It was typical to grow up sailing Sabots, which have leeboards and are only sailed in Southern California. From there on, you either transitioned into the CFJ to 420, or you took the Laser route and went from Radials to full rigs.

Kelly: Why do you think that you grew up sailing these boats instead of the typical Optis and 420s you see in all of the East Coast Junior Programs?

George: Sabots have always been in Southern California. It’s just sort of the history of the area. They were designed for the light air wind conditions, so they have just stuck.

Kelly: What are the typical conditions you see in Southern California and in Northern California?

George: We have light wind, lots of kelp, able to sail year-round but it’s not always the best conditions. However, we do get those good practice days in January when the East Coast doesn’t, but we also get those drifter days. It has its benefits, but also lacks in year-round breeze.
Annie: In San Francisco there is a lot of heavy air days and cold wetsuit days. In Southern California you don’t usually ever use wetsuits. It was a big difference competing in high school sailing up and down the coast and experiencing the different conditions just in our state.

Kelly: What has it been like transitioning to East Coast sailing?

Annie: For me it’s just the pace of sailing, and it’s definitely faster paced. There is a lot of competition out here and everyone always wants to race where as in sailing out of San Francisco there’s a lower competition. People aren’t as interested in racing, they love sailing just to do it.
George: My first transition was the purchase of a drysuit. I had never owned one of those before. I feel with the lack of the ability to sail year-round on the East Coast, people definitely take advantage of the times when they can sail. It’s a little bit more like, we’ve only got these few months, let’s make the most of it. Back home it’s a little more laid back. If it’s a good day you’ll go out, but if it’s not you’ll shake it off and you know there is always tomorrow. On the East Coast they take advantage of the moments they can sail and use it to practice more than you see at home.

Kelly: Anything you want to add about what it’s like sailing on the West Coast?

George: It’s more fun; I miss the noon starts for events and the breakfast burritos. Dunkin’ Donuts is not the same.

A College Sailor's Life: A Win at ACC’s to Finish my Senior Fall

2011-11-15T09:22:00.000-05:00

By: Kelly Stannard

This weekend marked the conclusion of the fall dinghy season in college sailing. Three of the biggest fall fleet races were on the line at the Pacific Coast Championship (PCC), the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship (WACC), and the Atlantic Coast Championship (ACC).

At the PCC’s, the schools on the west coast battled it out and Stanford came out on top with Cal. Santa Barbra second and Southern Cal placing third.

The WAA’s hosted by New York Maritime had some extremely tight racing and it came down to a tie breaker between the University of Rhode Island and Yale. Yale won the tie-breaker to win the event. In third place and only one point behind the top two was Dartmouth.

The ACC’s were hosted by Harvard, where I was competing this weekend for Roger Williams University. And yes, the Hawk’s won! I couldn’t think of a better way to finish off my senior year fall season. All of my teammates sailed extremely well this weekend and our Coach, Colin Merrick insisted that we, “Stay focused ALL weekend”. This motto seemed to work out well for us and we were able to stay as consistent as we could on the shifty Charles River winning overall by 43 points. Sailing A division was Sean Bouchard, our “heavy” Jake Bartlein, and me. We finished 6th. Our B division really kept us in the running all weekend. They won their division by 20 points. Sailing in B was, Alec Anderson, Sophie Bellacosa and Tyler Wilson.
Dartmouth finished second and Brown finished up second and third.

It was a beautiful weekend with warmer than anticipated weather, even though I still wore my drysuit and a neckwarmer both days! The season is over. Time to roll up my drysuit, hang up my boots, pack away the bailer and get some homework done before the spring season comes around.

A College Sailor's Life: A Little Bit for Everyone

2011-11-10T09:31:00.001-05:00

By Kelly Stannard

College Racing

This coming weekend will wrap-up the fall dinghy season. On the schedule is the Co-ed Atlantic Coast Championship for the 38th Fiske-Harriman-Sleigh Trophies hosted by Harvard University, the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship hosted by New York Maritime and the 2011 Pacific Coast Championship hosted by the University of California Santa Barbara. These events are the last big “hoorah” for fall dingy racing. Some even compare the caliber of competition to the spring dingy nationals.

Teams competing at the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship: Georgetown, Hobart & William Smith Colleges, U.S. Naval Academy, Cornell, SUNY Maritime College, St. Mary’s College of Maryland, Old Dominion, Dartmouth, Rhode Island, Connecticut College, Brown, Yale, Bowdoin, Vermont, Tufts, Eckerd, College of Charleston, South Florida

Teams competing at the Atlantic Coast Championship (co-ed): Georgetown, St. Mary's College of Maryland, Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Old Dominion, U.S. Naval Academy, SUNY Maritime College, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Penn, Dartmouth, Harvard, Yale, Brown, Roger Williams, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tufts, College of Charleston, Miami (Fla.), South Florida

Teams competing at the Pacific Coast Championship: Oregon, Washington, Western Washington, Arizona State, California Maritime Academy, Cal. State - Channel Islands, Long Beach State, Cal. State - Monterey Bay, Chapman, Santa Clara, Stanford, UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UCLA, UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara, UC Santa Cruz, Hawaii, Southern California

You can follow the results of these events on TechScore.

Fitness Surprises

So I can’t speak for all the college sailing teams and their fitness routines but at Roger Williams we have weekly workouts and usually once a month our coach slaps us with a fitness test. Tuesday morning I was expecting to have a fun team workout, you know something like indoor soccer, for our last week of the season but that would be too nice. Instead, while I was half asleep and just stumbled to the gym I was greeted with the “nice” surprise of our final fitness test of the year… Fabulous!

Our fitness test includes, a timed two mile run (if you can’t run for whatever reason you compete for distance for 20 minutes on a bike), maximum rep push-ups and sit-ups, and a timed wall-sit. Our times and numbers are then graded against the U.S. Army scoring system. For example, to receive a 100% in our age category you must complete 80 sit ups (no one holds your feet, arms crossed, sit ALL the way up). I was glad to get this last fitness test out of the way even though I wasn’t ecstatic about the 7 a.m. surprise.

I was curious. What do other college teams do for their fitness? Do you have a fitness test?

Please share.

Other News

I’d like to ask all of you if you’ve voted for the US Sailing's 2011 Rolex Yachtsman & Yachtswoman of the Year Awards? These two awards are the most prestigious awards in the country for sailing. The people who win these awards are the sailors you race against, the ones who you follow their results, and the ones you race against every weekend. If you haven’t taken the time to nominate someone, think about it and send in your nomination. The awards go to sailor’s who have had outstanding results throughout the calendar year, so if someone instantly pops into your thoughts it probably means they are worthy of a nomination. Give your peers some recognition. More info here..

Who do you think deserves these awards?

A College Sailor's Life: New National Champs!

2011-11-07T11:00:00.000-05:00

By: Kelly Stannard

Lots of racing took place around the conferences this weekend. Most notably the Men’s and Women’s Singlehanded National Championships were held in Chicago.

After the first four races of day one in Chicago, junior Cam Cullman from Yale and freshman Chris Stocke from University of South Florida (USF) were in the lead followed by junior Colin Smith of Brown for the Men’s Championship. For the Women’s Championship after day one, freshman Mary Hall from
Navy was in first, senior Corey Hall of College of Charleston was in second and senior Anne Haeger of Boston College (BC) who had won the event twice before was in third.

Things got shaken up along the way and after 15 races for both the men and the women, new National Champions were named! Cam Cullman from Yale is the Men’s Singlehanded Champion. Chris Stocke of USF won the tie breaker over senior Zeke Harowitz from Charleston to place second. On the women’s course, senior Annie Haeger of BC, for the third time in four years, is the Women’s Singlehanded National Champion. Junior Claire Dennis from Yale who won the event last year placed second closely followed by her teammate, junior Emily Billing in third.

Congratulations to all the competitors and to Annie and Cam for their victories!

At the Hap Moore Team Race at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy, Tufts won the event with a 13-2 record, Boston College placed second with a record of 12-3 and Roger Williams rounded out the top three with an 11-4 record.

At the Freshman Intersectional hosted by Bowdoin (not Connecticut College as I mentioned in my last blog, my mistake), the Tufts Jumbos placed first followed by both University of Vermont teams in second and third.
The SAISA/MAISA event was dominated by the Charleston Cougars. All three Charleston teams made up the top three spots for the event! Go home team!

For full results from these events and other events visit http://scores.collegesailing.info/.
This coming weekend is another big one on the East Coast with the Atlantic Coast Dinghies and Women’s Atlantic Coast Dinghies on the schedule.

Weekend College Sailing Preview

2011-11-03T11:23:00.001-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

I have this weekend off from racing but there are plenty of events happening all over the country. The biggest event of the weekend is the 2011-12 ICSA Men's and Women's Singlehanded National Championships hosted by Chicago Yacht Club. There is the Kennedy Cup, a sloop event, at the U.S. Naval Academy, the Hap Moore Team Race at U.S. Coast Guard, a Team Race Scrimmage on the West Coast at University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), the SAISA/MAISA at College of Charleston and the Freshmen Intersectional at Connecticut College.

The Singlehanded National Championships bring together 18 of the best men and women singlehanded sailors. All will compete for a national title to bring home to their schools, each has qualified for the event at a conference elimination. Men will sail Lasers and women will sail Laser Radials. I’m predicting it will be a tad bit chilly up in Chicago at this time of year. Racing starts tomorrow and ends Sunday. Sailors get a chance to do some open-water racing off of Belmont Harbor, the forecast for the weekend has breeze ranges from 5 to 20 knots, but you never know what you’ll get till you’re there. You can follow results on the event page, http://2011singlehanded.collegesailing.info/.

The competition will be stiff at both of these Championships. At the Men’s, junior Cam Cullman from Yale placed third last year, junior Colin Smith of Brown was seventh, junior Chris Barnard of Georgetown placed 10th and senior Sam Blouin of Hobart finished 15th. Cullman won the NEISA qualifier by more than 50 points. Four of the sailors who placed in the top five at this event last year have graduated leaving the podium open for newcomers to rise to the occasion.

The Women’s Singlehanded Nationals this year will have many of the sailors who competed last year back again to try and win the title. Four of the top five sailors from 2010 are returning, making for some tight and exciting races. Junior Claire Dennis of Yale edged out senior, Annie Haeger of Boston College by one point to win the event last year. In 2009, Haeger of BC won the event while Dennis took second. I’m guessing Haeger will be looking for a re-match against Dennis this year (Haeger’s senior year)! Also placing in the top five last year was sophomore, Arielle DeLisser from Hobart and William Smith who placed third and junior, Emily Billing of Yale who placed fourth.

Other events on the weekend schedule include the Hap Moore team race at Coast Guard where teams from NESIA and MAISA have a chance to get their feet wet with a fall team race. There is the sloop event at Navy where teams from all conferences will be competing in Navy 44’s, some more NEISA and MAISA teams will be throwing down at Charleston, the freshmen will have a chance to shine at the Freshman Intersectional hosted by Connecticut College and some of the West Coast schools will be at the Team Race Scrimmage at UCSB.

If you’re sailing at one of these events or a regatta we didn’t mention let us know how you’re preparing, and what you’re looking forward to!

It should be a busy weekend of high-level college sailing as usual. Which school do you think will win at the Men’s and Women’s Singlehanded Nationals? Add your comments below.

Competitors at Men’s Singlehanded by conference:

MAISA:
John Wallace '14 St. Mary's College of Maryland
Chris Barnard '13 Georgetown University
Samuel Blouin '12 Hobart & Williams Smith
Philip Alley '12 Cornell University

MCSA:
Andrew Fox '13, University of Wisconsin
Joseph Kutschenreuter '12, University of Wisconsin
Harrison Burton '14, University of Minnesota

NEISA:
Cam Cullman '13, Yale University
Colin Smith 13', Brown University
Lucas Adams '15, Brown University
Michael Zonnenberg '15, University of Vermont

NWICSA:
Elliot Drake '12, University of Oregon

PCCSC:
Mateo Vargas '14, Stanford University
Kieran Chung '15, Stanford University

SAISA:
Zeke Horowitz '12, College of Charleston
Christopher Stocke' 15 University of South Florida
David Hernandez '12, University of Miami

SEISA:
Trey Hartman '15, Texas A&M Galveston

Competitors at Women’s Singlehanded by conference:

MAISA:
Arielle DeLisser, Hobart & William Smith
Marissa Lihan U.S. Naval Academy
Giuditta deLaghi Hampton University
Mary Hall U.S. Naval Academy

MCSA:
Lauren-Alyssa Knoles Michigan State University
Ellen Dubois '14, University of Michigan
Natalie Sinn '12, University of Minnesota

NEISA:
Anne Hager '12 Boston College
Claire Dennis '13, Yale University
Emily Billings '13, Yale University
Sky Adams '14, Brown University
Jessica Claflin '13, Brown University

NWICSA:
Erika Vranizan '12 Western Washington University

PCCSC:
Molly McKinney '14, Stanford University
Kaitlyn Baab '15, Stanford University

SAISA:
Corey Hall '12, College of Charleston
Dominique Wright '15 University of South Florida

SEISA:
Rebekka Urbina '12, Texas A&M University Galveston

A College Sailor's Life: Sailing in the Snow!

2011-10-31T10:10:00.002-04:00

By: Kelly Stannard

As I said in my Thursday blog, this was a big weekend for schools in NEISA with both the co-ed and the women’s qualifying events for Atlantic Coast Dinghies. Both of these events were held in Boston, ladies were at Harvard, and the Schell was at MIT.

All over New England the weather was brutal, Saturday was one of the nastiest days of sailing I have been a part of in awhile. At Yale, racing was canceled due to white out snow conditions!


Tyler Macdonald and Jake Bartlein give Coach a thumbs up. (Photo by Alex Rudkin)

At the Schell and the Urn it was freezing cold with pelting rain and big breeze on the Charles always means deadly auto-tacks are lurking on the course. I only sailed the first four races and luckily the rain hadn’t started yet. The rest of the day the heavy crews battled the elements and put up with the terrible conditions while we watched from inside one of MIT’s unheated boat bays. I’m not sure which was colder, sailing, or watching sailing!

For Sunday we had a delayed report time to allow for the wintery conditions to clear and make traveling safe! Who ever thought we would be dealing with a winter weather advisory before Halloween? When we got to MIT, the boats had snow on them and many competitors enjoyed tossing a snowball or two at their teammates. I was expecting another day of sitting on land because high winds were forecasted for most of the day so I made sure to pack plenty of warm layers again! It turned out that the forecast wasn’t too accurate and it was lighter breeze. I was able to sail all day in the 3-16 knot shifty winds; it was exciting and scary all at once. The top of the beats had some hairy shifts and large unpredictable puffs made for wild auto-tacks. It was absolutely crucial to be able to have inter-boat communication about the puffs coming down at you and to be on the same page to determine whether you’d flop right over or dig into the shift a little more before you decide what it’ll give you. My skipper Sean Bouchard, heavy crew Tyler Wilson, and I managed to figure out the ways of the river and we won A division by 30 points!

As expected the competition was tight for both events and unfortunately despite the wide talent pool at both the Schell and the Urn, only the top 7 from Schell and top 8 from Urn will move on to Atlantic Coast Dinghies. TechScore has full racing summaries and scores, http://scores.collegesailing.info/. The Roger Williams Hawks placed 5th at Schell and unfortunately we missed qualifying at the Urn by one place.

A College Sailor's Life: A Big Weekend for NEISA Teams

2011-10-27T10:54:00.000-04:00

By: Kelly Stannard

This weekend is an extremely important weekend for all teams in New England. Both the co-ed and women’s qualifiers for the Atlantic Coast Dinghies (ACD) are taking place, the Schell at MIT and the Women's Victorian Urn at Harvard University. At the Schell, the top eight teams will advance to the ACD and at the Urn, the top 7 NEISA teams will advance to the Women’s Atlantic Coast Dinghies.

We’ve had some solid results at the Schell in the past. The last two years the Hawks have consistently placed 2nd and we won in 2006 in some epic conditions that were so windy the regatta organizers put the storm sails on the Tech Dinghies. Our women’s team has never qualified for the ACD but we are hoping to change that this weekend!

This is a time for the top NEISA teams to throw down and prove who the best of the North East is. For the Schell, Roger Williams we will be sending Alec Anderson, Sophie Bellacosa and Tyler Wilson to represent A division. Representing the B division will be Sean Bouchard, myself, and Jake Bartlein. Representing the Hawks at the Urn will be Haley Powell, Alyssa Seifert, and Jaye Fay in A division with Annie Schmidt, Wendy Reuss, and Rachel Perry sailing in B division.

Sometimes teams will break up their A and B division teams and send them to different events for the weekend but I expect each team to send their top teams to these two important qualifiers, it’ll make for some challenging competition. In the latest Sailing World Rankings, which came out October 13th, ten of the twenty co-ed teams are from NEISA and nine of the fifteen women’s teams are from NEISA. All eighteen teams at the Schell will be looking to make it to ACD and all thirteen NEISA teams at the Urn will be pushing themselves to go on to the WACD, but only the top eight and the top seven will go on.

Many events this fall have had light and shifty conditions including the Hoyt last weekend, the Hatch Brown, the Captain Hurst, the Mrs. Hurst, the Moody, etc. I am hoping that the experience with unpredictable breeze has prepared the Hawks to perform on the Charles this weekend which notoriously brings some shifty and squirrely conditions. Our success at the Captain Hurst can be attributed to our team being able to stay focused and sail on the conservative side in the mentally exhausting conditions. I think we will need to be in a similar mindset for this coming weekend.

There will certainly be a high level of competition this weekend and I’m looking forward to seeing how it all unfolds! You can follow the results at http://scores.collegesailing.info/. I wish us luck and I wish all my fellow NEISA teams luck. I’ll see you all on the Charles!

A College Sailor's Life: Light Winds and Rings

2011-10-24T17:07:00.000-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

Another weekend finished leaves me with only three more weekends of racing for my senior fall season! It’s hard to believe how fast it goes by. For those of you who read my blog on Friday, you know I was at the Hoyt Trophy at Brown, hosted by Boston College.

At this event we had some trying conditions on both days. Saturday each division waited around for the breeze to settle and the first race started at 1 P.M., each division was able to get in four races. We raced in 3-10 knots of breeze, and witnessed some 90 degree shifts swinging from North to West. After racing the Hawks, in record time, de-rigged and hurried back to school to get dressed up for our Ring Ceremony to celebrate our Team Racing National Championship in June. We got back to campus with only a half hour to get ready and look our very best in front of the many people who came out to celebrate. Guest s included, our University President, Vice President, Athletic Director, Assistant Athletic Director, parents (including mine), fans, friends etc., the list goes on and on.

Our Global Heritage Hall was the perfect setting for the ceremony with its great view of the bay and open space. Teammates, Alex Rudkin, Josh Gershuney and Mark Gargula spent the day making it look wonderful, they even managed to get one of our boats rigged up inside! It was a simple gathering with some great appetizers; some socializing and we re-watched Sailgrooves coverage of the final race against Boston College and our team celebrating afterwards. Even though I have probably seen the videos over 20 times they still give me the chills when I watch our boats cross the finish line in a 1-2 combo knowing we had won our first nationals. It was awesome to re-share the moment with everyone who came and to know that our school supports us so much. Although we didn’t get our championship rings Saturday night (there was a scheduling issue, they’ll be here by the end of the week) we finally saw what they were going to look like, they are pretty awesome. I can’t wait to get mine and wear it (pictures to come ASAP)!

After an exciting night with the team and dinner with my parents, it was back to Brown Sunday morning. A division set out and was able to get in one race before the breeze turned off. We had quite the long on-land postponement, giving us some time to toss a football and beat BC in a little parking lot soccer scrimmage. It was a 4 v 4 game with Aigle’s and sandals as make shift goal posts. The only rule was that for a goal to count the ball must pass through the “posts” on the ground. I got roped into this and played in my Ugg boots, not the best for soccer I must say, and the game got pretty heated! People lost their spray pants and traded them in for some athletic shorts and sneakers to try to get a competitive edge, unfortunately the sneakers weren’t enough for BC and they just couldn’t handle the soccer skills of RWU, we won 3-0. After everyone was winded from soccer we went back to tossing the football (I can say I successful learned to spiral a full sized football this weekend thanks to the help of my teammates). After we also grew tired of football we retreated to our van and had some pizza delivered. A hot pizza lunch and some Orange Crush soda gave us just enough energy to go out for our last set.

B division went out for two races followed by A division finishing their last race just before the time limit. Overall we finished up in 5th place with Boston College winning, Yale placing second, and Charleston placing 3rd. It was another challenging weekend with light and shifty conditions but it should prove to be good practice for the Schell next weekend at MIT.

At the Stu Nelson at Connecticut College our women’s team placed 3rd, also competing with fickle winds, at the Oberg we finished 9th overall, and at our home event we had three different RWU teams compete, they finished, 2nd, 3rd and 6th! Overall, it was another solid weekend for the Hawks.

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

2011-10-21T10:30:00.001-04:00

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.

A College Sailor’s Life: Fall is officially here!

2011-10-18T10:46:00.000-04:00

By: Kelly Stannard

Last weekend we were lucky as Mother Nature greeted us with a second summer for a few days, just to tease us. In New Hampshire this weekend, it certainly was not a second summer. It was chilly! Lots of dry suits were being pulled out of their warm weather hibernation to shake off the dust and keep many of us sailors in New England warm, myself included! I sailed at Dartmouth this weekend, competing in the Captain Hurst Bowl. While we were sailing, there was lots happening onshore. It was parent’s weekend at Dartmouth and as usual, Mrs. Hurst brought loads of delicious baked goods for competitors to enjoy. Parents brought more baked goods, hot chocolate, grilled food, and even candy to share with us. It was so nice to come off the water and be able to drink some hot chocolate to warm up, a special thank you to all of the Dartmouth parents.

The dedicated fans of Darthmouth cheer from ashore.

While most of us were trying to warm up in the heated bathrooms or by holding a hot drink, a group of young men from Dartmouth came down to show their school spirit for the sailing team. They had D-A-R-T-M-O-U-T-H painted on their chests and stood on the beach cheering their team on. It was pretty awesome to have some loud fans at a sailing event, it’s not often you have people chanting, “ease, hike, trim” or “tack that boat!”

With all of the distractions of chocolate chip cookies, welcoming parents, and the presence of some die-hard fans, we actually got some racing in too. Many events had trouble because of too much breeze, but we were shocked on Saturday morning when we arrived to see we had any wind at all! Dartmouth typically has extremely light and shifty conditions. Fortunately, there was great breeze, but the shiftiness was definitely still there. Saturday, our team had some up and down scores but we were all able to stay mentally fit when dealing with the huge pressure and angle changes out on the course. It wasn’t unusual to see at least two auto-tacks on any given upwind beat. The breeze picked up enough for heavies to get out there for two sets in the middle of the day, so I can truly say it was a whole team effort this weekend! Everyone we brought got to sail (Alec Anderson, Sophie Bellacosa, Tyler Wilson, Sean Bouchard, Jake Bartlein, and myself). Sunday, the gang came well rested and prepared for another long and mentally draining day of battling crazy shifts. Both our A and B boats sailed extremely conservatively. Things started to click, with the exception of our last set of the day, and neither of us placed out of the top 3. Being able to post consistent scores pushed the Hawks into first and we were able to win the event, and both divisions!

A College Sailor's Life: Light Winds Call for the “Bailer Game”

2011-10-12T14:29:00.002-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

Well we just wrapped up another awesome weekend for the Hawks. All around I’d say it was a successful weekend for the team. Some standout performances should be mentioned, at the Moody, we won! At the Hobart Intersectional we placed fourth, with Andrew Tamblyn and Josh Gershuny winning B division! At the Navy Women’s Fall Intersectional we finished up in seventh with Annie Shmidt and Wendy Reuss placing third in B division.

I was stranded on an island off of URI somewhere in the Point Judith Salt Pond competing for the Moody Trophy, and boy was it a hot, which was nice considering its October! The weekend had light winds both days which we loved - both of our boats were on the lighter side. With the light winds it was shifty and made for some interesting racing. URI is located all the way inland in one of the many salt ponds in the area, racing must be done outside the pond and rotations happen on a small island about half way out of the pond. It is a rocky and uninhabited, very small little chunk of land with lots of rocks and not much shade. We made sure to pack our own beach chairs to lounge in between our sets and soak up some of the last warm weather of the year.

On Saturday my skipper for the event, Alec Anderson and I found that our starts basically stunk. The line was fairly short and a port tack approach looking for a hole late typically didn’t work well for us. Luckily we had great boat speed and were able to squirt out off the line and tack our way into a nice lane upwind to get back into the racing. It was extremely shifty and keeping our heads out of the boat and constantly talking about the conditions kept us in the top pack.

Sunday the breeze was temperamental and didn’t fill until almost noon. This allowed for lots of “the bailer game” on the island. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this game it is a simple way to pass time and entertain a large group of sailors while they wait for wind. You take a bailer, place it about 5-10 yards away from you, depending on your rock throwing skill level, and start to build support around the bailer with large rocks or sand. It is important to properly support the bailer so that when larger rocks get thrown it will not fall over. After the bailer is in place everyone picks up small rocks around them and the goal is to get your rock into the bailer. It’s amazing how long this can entertain people. Naturally the game progresses to throwing larger and larger rocks with increasing force, we inevitably ended up cracking several bailers this weekend.

After some quality time spent throwing rocks at a bailer, the breeze eventually filled and was even more shifty than Saturday! This kept everyone on their toes and it was fun conditions to race in for the last few races of the event. You really couldn’t ask for a better weekend of sailing, it was warm and sunny, I played games with a bunch of fellow sailors, and we won!

A Collge Sailor's Life: Back in the swing of things

2011-10-09T15:42:00.000-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

After switching it up last weekend with team racing in Houston, I’m back in Rhode Island and hitting the college circuit once again. Let me just say this week has been a bit chilly compared to the beautiful weather in Texas. I wore my dry suit to practice the last two days! They say it’ll warm up again in time for the weekend where I’ll be headed to the University of Rhode Island for the Moody Trophy.

I’ll be crewing for Alec Anderson in A division, Tyler Macdonald and Samantha Bobo will be sailing B division and if the breeze picks up we have two awesome “heavies” Tyler Wilson and Jake Bartlein. This will be an intersectional event with 11 berths from NEISA, 4 from MAISA, and 3 other invites. It will be interesting to see what conditions URI brings us this weekend. The last time I was there was for the New England Qualifier for Semi Finals in the spring and it was the windiest regatta I have ever seen in college sailing. I don’t expect this weekend to be nearly as crazy!

Getting ready for the weekends isn’t always just about on the water practice. Our team also has a fitness component to our schedule. We have morning work outs every Tuesday and Thursday mornings at 7 A.M. and it’s expected that everyone will try to get to the gym on their own time as well. We mix it up with what we do, on Tuesday for example we played a game of water polo. I personally just tread water and try not to get pushed under by the stronger more aggressive swimmers on the team! Not only is it a great work out its wildly entertaining to see a pool full of sailor’s attempting to play water polo. Over all we focus a lot on cardio endurance and core strength. To see that we are all on track with our fitness goals our coach, Amanda Callahan, administers a fitness test once a month.

It just so happens that she surprised us with one yesterday morning; these are our teams’ favorite at 7 A.M.! The fitness test consists of a timed 2 mile run, max amount of push-ups and sit-ups we can do and timed wall sit. For those who have bad knees or ankles the bike is the alternative to the 2 mile and you go for max distance within 20 minutes. To evaluate our tests our coach compares our numbers to those of the Army fitness scores and percentiles expected in our age group. For example to earn 100% in sit-ups you have to be able to do 80. Not only does she grade these she expects that we improve our scores over time. I wish she still had my first score sheet as a freshman four years ago to see how far I have come!

Lots of non-sailors don’t understand why you need to be physically fit to sail but anyone who has sailed dinghies competitively knows that after a long day in big breeze if you’re out of shape, you probably didn’t post any impressive finishes!

A College Sailor's Life - Reflections from a Special Weekend in Houston

2011-10-05T13:15:00.001-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

I’ve had a few days now to relax and digest, so to speak, after this weekend. Team Minor Threat made our first appearance as a team at the U.S. Team Racing Championship for the Hinman Trophy and came away victorious. Several of our team members have individually competed in the event but this was our debut as team Minor Threat.

We got a lot of questions about how our team came together over the weekend. In college sailing all of our boats were each other’s main competition. Charlie Buckingham and Alex Taylor sailed A division together for Georgetown. Tyler Sinks and Lucy Wallace sailed A division for Boston College and Cy Thompson and I sailed A division for Roger Williams. Over the last few years our schools have been each other’s rivals in both fleet and team racing. We seem like a misfit team to most people because so many of the other teams competing in the team racing circuit join forces from the same college. Team Minor Threat went down a different route, the skippers got together and got to talking. Basically, they decided that we should join forces and see what we can do when we are on the same side; in a nutshell that’s how we became Minor Threat.

Individually, each of our boat pairs are extremely talented, we had no idea what we could do collectively. The Hinman was our second event sailing together, earlier this year we competed in the New York Yacht Club Team Race where we placed third, behind the Woonsocket Rockets and Team Extreme. We were all pumped about our finish at the NYYC Team Race because it was our first event together but we came to the Hinman with vengeance.

I feel a main part of our success this past weekend was our ability to stay focused and have fun with each other. All of us are busy with school, a “real job”, Olympic Campaigns, or searching for a “real job” so being together again for a weekend we agreed we wanted to make the most out of it. We put our team together to see what we could do and we proved that we could hold our own with some of the best team racing
The competition at this event was extremely challenging, the names you see on the list of competitors is remarkable, there are past and present Olympians, ICSA All-Americans and world champions. It was incredible to be a part of such a talented pool of sailors. Going into our first round robin, where each team races each other once, we knew that every team is good and went into it with an “each race is important” mentality. We finished 10-4 overall, which qualified us for the top six. Previous records were erased, leveling the playing field once again. We were pleased to make it through but knew we’d have to step it up the third day in the double round of top six teams if we had a chance for the title.

I would say this was the turning point in the event for us. We certainly rose to the occasion when we went undefeated in the first round and only lost one race to Larchmont Yacht Club in the second round. Team Extreme was the favored team going into the weekend with their all-star team and experience together. In the first round robin against Team Extreme, they beat us with a good start. Our team struggled a bit with our starts in this round. We talked about what was working and what wasn’t and revamped our starting strategy for the third day. This revamp seemed to work and all of our boats were getting off the line clean in the double round of six. This was a crucial component of the equation against Team Extreme who typically have great starts.
We buckled down to the basics, were able to get clean starts, and from there, our individual boat speed in all conditions and our executions of the plays is what made us successful.

So, where do we go from here? Well, we all flew in from different corners of the country and we all flew back to different corners of the country! I went back to Roger Williams and college sailing, Cy and Charlie are back to the grind with their Laser campaigns, Lucy is starting her job as a consultant in New York City this week, Alex is back to her job in Boston, and Tyler is back to Cali where he has a month chuck full of job interviews.

This weekend I’ll be competing for the Moody Trophy at the University of Rhode Island. I’ll be blogging this Friday about our preparations for this Intersectional Regatta.

Reading the Tell Tales: Taking Cues From Your Child to Develop Success

2011-10-03T09:31:00.001-04:00

By Jessica M. Mohler, Psy.D., CC-AASP
Clinical and Sport Psychologist
United States Naval Academy

The summer sailing season has come to an end. You may be attending your end of summer banquet or barbecue, and talking with instructors and coaches about how your child did in their summer sailing program. You may have some hopes or expectations about your child’s experience based upon your own observations or conversations you had over the summer. You may also have hopes or expectations based on a comparison between your child and another or with a sibling, but how do you really know what to expect? As discussed in my previous articles, your child’s finish around the race course or end of year regatta tells you very little about your their development. So as parents, what can we expect our child to learn from the sport of sailing? Ginsburg, Durant, and Batzell (2006) suggest six areas of development for parents to consider when trying to understand and learn about their children:

Confidence
Elementary school children build confidence through mastery. Learning the skills of sailing, how to rig a boat, tacking, and reading wind on the water are all skills that once learned, build confidence in your sailor. It is not until the beginning of middle school that children begin to understand that they have strengths and weaknesses and can understand, “I may not be the first off the line, but I am good at reading wind shifts so I will be great at crewing!”

Interests
Elementary school children are discovering their likes and dislikes. Exposing them to a wide range of activities is ideal, including singlehanded and doublehanded dinghies, big boats, cruising and racing. At the end of elementary school, many parents and children are making decisions about whether to continue in the sport of sailing or whether to pursue other interests. As you move towards middle school, the challenge is to find balance. The time involved in travel and racing can be demanding and not the right fit for every child. This may be the age your child tells you that he does not want to race anymore, but would like to find a boat to crew on or take day sails.

Relationships
While the goal for elementary school aged children is finding friends and developing strong bonds, these are the relationships that may eventually provide peer pressure, both positive and negative. Just think about how much time you spend with your child during a week of sailing school, it is much less than the time they spend with their sailing friends. Developing early childhood friendships is important for healthy development, but pressure to compete at this age can cause strain in those friendships. As she or he gets older, teachers and coaches begin to have more influence, and knowing these instructors can be the key to ensuring not only a healthy, but also a skilled sailor.

Judgment
The ability for elementary children to judge their own performance accurately is limited. It is often either all good or bad and if they perform poorly, it means to them that they are a bad sailor. They are also sensitive to your beliefs. A parent’s non-verbal cues can have a significant impact on a child’s belief system, but as the child gets older, they begin to make judgments on their own. As a parent you are there to provide support and guidance to help, but the values children learned from their younger years will help them make good decisions on the water and at the regatta party.

Emotional control
Sailing is a wonderful sport in which to learn emotional control! While your elementary school aged child is learning this skill and may not have mastered it until late in elementary school, by middle school, your child can have a negative emotion and express it appropriately. A 10 year old may slam his tiller several times on the boat when he makes a mistake, but hopefully by age 15, he can quickly refocus on the task at hand even though he just became angry. Parents play a large role in the process of emotional development. Accurate assessment of your child’s needs coupled with appropriate action can prevent your child from asking themselves, “Can I talk about my bad race and get support from my dad, or will he be upset with me because of my performance?”

Sports related skills
This is one of the most difficult areas to assess at all age ranges because of the variation in growth among children. Parents often have expectations of their children that do not take into account age related development. A child’s vision, hearing, and kinesthetic sense may not be fully developed until high school. Asking a child to anticipate wind strength and depth perception in order to have a successful close crossing on port tack or make a layline without overstanding may be unrealistic. These sensory skills are critical to successful performance in sailing and yet children may not have these skills after several years of sailing because they are too young. The goal through the elementary years is to focus on learning skills and technique while maintaining effort. Talent and maturity develop at different periods for each child and as their physical ability catches up to their learned skill, performance can quickly change.

So you now know some key areas of development for your child, but how do you find out how they are doing, how they feel about himself as a sailor, do they like sailing, are they making friends and making good decisions with their friends, do they come to you and talk about her good races and bad, and is he developing the sailing skills he needs to get to his next level? While some parents can just ask their children these questions and have a conversation, some parents may get one word answers and feel defeated that their child would rather watch TV or talk on the phone to a friend than talk about sailing. Here are some tips on how to develop a conversation so that you can learn about your child:

1. Remember, if you want to learn about your child in a conversation, save your advice giving for another time.
2. Listen. Show you are listening by nodding your head, keeping eye contact and saying, “uh-huh, interesting, etc…”
3. Use open-ended questions. Keep asking, not telling.
4. Find a good time for your child. Some children need time after they sailed to decompress and talk with friends, but there will be a good time.
5. Use a different activity to talk about sailing. Sometimes children are more willing to talk about thoughts and feelings when they are putting together a puzzle or playing a game.
6. Enjoy the time with your child! As your child gets older, you may have less time to sit down and talk, so make it count when you have the chance.

See you on the water!

A College Sailor’s Life – Winning the Hinman Trophy

2011-10-02T19:28:00.002-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

In the third and final day of the U.S. Team Race Nationals, team Minor Threat really pulled it together all the way to the end. Starting off the day early, the race committee immediately jumped into the first round of final six. We went undefeated in this round. After this first round was completed, the consolation round hit the water. After they were unable to complete the round, they sent out the top six for their second round. We only lost one race to Larchmont Yacht Club.

They tried to wrap up the event with the finals but light shifty breeze prevented this from happening. They called it off at about 5:00 P.M. Team Minor Threat was victorious!

It felt amazing knowing that we had won. Our team was able to stay focused from the long day and got off the line clean in our races, a nice change from yesterday! Our team dynamic is great. Each one of our boats comes from a different college sailing background. Cy and myself sailed together at Roger Williams, Charlie and Alex sailed together at Georgetown, and Tyler and Lucy sailed together at Boston College. The diverse range of previous team racing experience gave us an edge when we combined all our favorite moves and strategies. It’s interesting to see what each of our boats brings to the table, and together we work super well.
The race committee, the Houston Yacht Club, US SAILING, all of the many volunteers, the umpires, and of course the fellow competitors made it an incredible event!

A College Sailor's Life - Day Two at the U.S. Team Race National Championship

2011-10-01T19:37:00.002-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

Team Minor Threat had somewhat of a laid back morning today which was nice... well sort of! Yesterday ended with race 52 in the first round robin and our next race was not until race 79. We were able to get an extra hour of sleep and there was no huge rush to get to the club early. Racing for the rest of the teams got started around 10:00 A.M.

We spent our time on land tossing a football, reading, catching up with our competitors and watching some of the races. The teams who sailed in the morning had some big breeze, which again died down a bit in the afternoon when our team hit the water.

We had three races to finish our round. The first race was a tough loss to Boston BOOM, when two of our boats were over early. We fought back hard and almost had it around mark 3 with a play 4 but we fouled and had to spin, loosing the ace. I think sitting around on land hurt us a little. We all agreed that we’d spend more time warming up before our next set of races to get us back into concentration mode. After that we bounced back with two wins over Pretty Good Thirds and SoCal Trojans. After our three races, we were back to the waiting game to see if the race committee could pump out the last 20 or so races to finish up the first round robin, and move into the next stage of the event.

Race committee was able to finish up the single round robin of 105 races. Tomorrow they’ll split up the fleet into a top 6 and bottom 9. Hopefully there will be the same great conditions tomorrow to finish up the event! You can follow the scores on the US SAILING’s Twitter page: http://twitter.com/#!/ussailing.

A College Sailor's Life - Day One at the U.S. Team Racing Championship

2011-09-30T19:47:00.002-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

Houston Yacht Club greeted the fifteen teams competing for the Hinman Trophy with sun, warmth and plenty of great breeze. Everyone arrived, tied up all the loose ends with registrations and hit the water for some racing after the competitors briefing.

Conditions were beautiful with nice wind for the majority of the day, which tapered off near the end.

Our team, Minor Threat had a good day of racing with 8 wins. Team Trouble finished today with 7 wins and Team Extreme with 6 wins. It’s still early as we are only about half way through the first round robin. Some teams have only sailed a few races while others have sailed many.

The Houston Yacht Club, the umpires, and all of the many volunteers have been doing a great job of running the event. Race committee was always more than willing to fill up water bottles in between races, which is a crucial part of a long day in the heat. The umpires have been on their game making lots of calls and keeping the racing fair. On land the volunteers have also been awesome, helping with boat rotations, setting up lunch, etc. A lot of planning goes into organizing and putting on a regatta like this, so my hat goes off to everyone involved. Everyone has been extremely accommodating and made us feel welcome.

As far as racing goes today, we found our inter-team communication strong and all of our boats were on the same page with plays. When all three of our boats could get off the line clean, it usually resulted in a successful finish to the race. If you get behind from the start it makes for a difficult comeback with the high level of skills all the teams bring to this event. In addition to our strong communication we felt our boat speed was fairly decent considering none of our team members spend much time in V15s. Tomorrow, we’ll try to hone in on getting back to the basics with starts and getting off clean.

I’m looking forward to tomorrow and seeing how the teams that didn’t get in a lot of races today end up. You can follow updates on the US SAILING Twitter page; http://twitter.com/ussailing.

A College Sailor's Life: On the Road

2011-09-29T09:01:00.002-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

I am currently sitting in the Charlotte Douglas International Airport waiting for my connecting flight to Houston to compete in the U.S. Team Racing Championship, a US SAILING National Championship event, for the George R. Hinman Trophy. It’ll only be a few hours till I am reunited with my teammates Cy Thompson, Tyler Sinks, Lucy Wallace, Charlie Buckingham and Alex Taylor! I am anxious and excited to get there and get out on the water.

Today competitors can check-in and have some time to practice before the event begins Friday.

It sounds like it will be a hot weekend and I’m looking forward to the challenging competition. Stay tuned for nightly recaps from Houston!

A College Sailor's Life: Wind Delays and Dinner Adventures

2011-09-26T12:59:00.000-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

This weekend featured long drives and long wind delays for the Roger Williams Hawks. Our drive to St. Mary’s Friday afternoon inevitably became a 12 hour trip with traffic. Once we finally arrived at St. Mary’s, competitors were greeted with very light and shifty breeze both Saturday and Sunday. The conditions only permitted for two races in each division the first day and six races per division on Sunday. This, however, was more races than most events hosted up and down the east coast. It seemed everyone was greeted with less than favorable wind this weekend!

Even with the frustrating breeze conditions our team pulled of a fifth place finish overall. Winning the event was Connecticut College with the home team, St. Mary’s, hot on their heels. Rounding out the top three were the Boston College Eagles. At the sloop qualifier for nationals in Boston, our team consisting of Alec Anderson, Zack Shapiro, Annie Schmidt and Dylan Vogel, placed second. This secured us a spot for ICSA Sloop Nationals! Wahoo! Go team!

The long drive and long waits ashore allowed for lots of snacking and lots of homework to get done! Among our snacking was the quest for Domino’s Pizza on the drive home. This simple task of finding a store approximately 30 miles ahead on our route, deciding what we would get, which coupons we had, and how much we could get with the thirty dollars we had left from the weekend was not so simple. The back of the van inevitably disagreed with the front of the van and technical failure of iPhones and GPS’s aided in our many u-turns all over in southern Maryland. When we finally had ordered, found the place, and purchased our two extra large pies, we were unimpressed to say the least. Their website said our order would feed 18 people; well our motley crew of seven gulped it all down in about ten minutes flat. Despite the disappointing size of the pizza’s everyone seemed to be satisfied and we had some left over snacks to hold us over till we got home. With everyone’s bellies full the van went from a loud mess of arguing, to the munching of hot pizza, and finally to the silence of sleepy sailors.

I was not one of the sleepy sailors yet! I still had a 100 or so more pages of reading to wrap up. Luckily, and surprisingly avoiding getting car sick, I was able to polish this off by the time we reached New York City and eventually I was able to get little shut eye! I’ll need every bit of extra sleep I can get coming into another crazy busy week! I’ve got loads of assignments and I fly to Houston, Texas early Thursday morning to compete at the U.S. Team Racing Championship with my team, Minor Threat.

My next few blog posts will be coming to you from Houston. I’ll try to give you some short recaps of my firsthand experience racing in a US SAILING National Championship!

A College Sailor's Life: Getting Back in the Boat

2011-09-22T11:33:00.002-04:00

Kelly Stannard will be sailing at the St. Mary's College
of Maryland Intersectional this weekend.

By Kelly Stannard

As you’ve learned from Monday’s blog entry, I was not able to practice or sail in last weekends events due to a concussion I sustained while sailing. To not sail with my team was a very different experience for me. To recover, I had to force myself to take a break; I’m always on the go. Regular days are filled to the max between being at US SAILING in the morning, to class, to practice, to team workouts, to team meetings, to the library, and finally to bed! I’m sure many college sailors can relate. Not being able to attend practice last week left me with a huge open space in my schedule which I used to rest and catch up on my studies, but now it’s back to the grind.

I was cleared to sail on Tuesday morning by our athletic training staff. This is terrific news! I find if I don’t have a little bit of sailing in my day I start to lose it and one week out was long enough. This week, so far, has been about easing me back into my usual routine. I took practice slow on Tuesday afternoon but I was quick to get back into the swing of things. Luckily my muscle memory for footwork in an FJ has developed and is strong from the last four years, which makes the short break not too damaging in that aspect. I was happy just to be out on the water to be honest, and I was feeling good! Wednesday was back to a normal practice and workout routine, both went smoothly. Today will be the last day of practice we can squeeze in before the weekend regatta, we’ll be on the road heading south during Friday’s practice.

That’s right! A group of the Roger Williams Hawks are flying south for competition. This weekend I’ll be at the St. Mary’s College of Maryland Intersectional at St. Mary’s. This event will have eight teams from MAISA (The Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association), five teams from NEISA (New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association), two teams from PCCSC (Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference), and two teams from SAISA (South Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association). With competition coming from all over it should prove to be a challenging weekend of racing. I can’t wait! I will be part of the racing instead of constantly checking the team’s scores online from home like last weekend. Well, I’ll probably still be checking the scores online for the other events our team will be sailing at on my smart phone, but that’s beside the point! You can follow them too; scores.collegesailing.info.

Fortunately, I was only out of my regular routine for a week. The University of New Hampshire Sailing team was out of their regular routine for the past year. The team endured a tragic fire which damaged their boathouse and boats severely. After taking a year to rebuild, in many ways, they are fully back in action. This weekend will be the first time that their new boathouse along with their new boats and new sails will be completely showcased to the NEISA community! I can only imagine how exciting this is for their team and everyone involved, I wish them luck!

I’ll be sure to fill you in on how the weekend went on Monday, I’ll let you know how our nine hour drive was, talk about the conditions and analyze the results!

A College Sailor's Life: Bringing You up to Speed

2011-09-19T13:43:00.003-04:00

Kelly Stannard is a senior captain of the
Roger Williams sailing team.
Photo by Rob Migliaccio

Usually I would start my Monday blog by filling you in on how I sailed at the regatta over the weekend, but this week is a bit different. Two weekends ago, I sustained a concussion while sailing in a regatta. It was a breezy downwind and unfortunately my head got in the way of the boom. Yes, this really happens. Sailing is a dangerous sport right up there with football and lacrosse (in my opinion anyway ).This took me out of practice all last week and this past weekend’s competition. I am feeling much better and I’ll be good to sail this week and beyond. Hooray! So instead of giving you a recap of my regatta I’ll bring you up to speed on our team and my role on it.

I am a senior, one of our co-captains and a veteran crew on our team. As a captain I lead by example at practice and on land I have various organizing tasks to do for the team though out the season, and I attend the University SAAC (student athlete advocacy council) meetings. Each team on campus has representatives in attendance and together we work to make our athletics department better. Last year I sailed in A division for the team with my former skipper of two years, Cy Thompson. He graduated in the spring, so this year I am learning to adjust and sail with new and different skippers. Sailing with the same person for so long you stop having to talk about every single thing you do, you automatically know what the other person’s next move is, and your boat handling becomes extremely smooth together. This year I get the chance to develop this same comfort level with someone new!

The Roger Williams Sailing team just had a hugely successful spring 2011 season, which was highlighted by winning Team Race Nationals in our first time ever qualifying! I can’t describe to you how amazing it was to be a part of. This was a great moment for the team and the university. We definitely received more publicity than we were used to. That being said we have high expectations this year. It will be a challenge to keep up the high energy that we had spilling out of us after Nationals all the way through the colder months of the sailing season. Lots of hot chocolate from parents on the weekends will help…hint…hint.

We only graduated a few seniors last year but we will miss them all. We just completed our tryouts and have an extremely promising incoming freshman class. In addition it looks like the “Rog” might be creeping up in the Women’s rankings this year!

To stay on the path of completing all of our goals, it will take dedication from every single member of our team. When everyone makes it a point to take something away from practice each day it pushes everyone to a higher standard. It motivates each other to challenge their own limits. It’s this attitude in practice that will help us on the weekends. This thought process can be used by any team. The better quality of your practices, the better quality results you’ll see at events. It doesn’t matter if you are competing to be ranked first in Sailing World’s college rankings or if your just trying to get enough people on your team to fill an A division and a B division, the same rules apply. High energy, good practices, positive attitudes, usually results in better results!

Even though I wasn’t able to be out on the water this weekend it doesn’t mean I wasn’t hitting refresh on TechScore to follow my teams’ results. We sent teams to the Hatch Brown at MIT, the Nevins at Kings Point, the Mrs. Hurst Bowl at Dartmouth and the Central Series at Boston College. Our best finish of the weekend was at the Hatch Brown, we placed 3rd with the MIT Beavers finishing second at their home event and College Of Charleston Cougars placing 1st. For more results visit scores.collegesailing.info. Not sailing is an odd concept for me! I never get a single weekend off throughout the season, so sitting on the sidelines is a frustrating role for me. Luckily I am good to go for this week and will be back to competition this weekend!

A College Sailor's Life - My Introduction

2011-09-15T09:28:00.000-04:00

By Kelly Stannard

Kelly Stannard (left) is a two-time All-American
crew for Roger Williams University.

My name is Kelly Stannard and I am a senior communications major and co-captain of the Roger Williams University varsity sailing team. I have a busy and challenging semester ahead of me. As a full-time student, I’ll be applying my education in an internship with US SAILING’s communications department. My sailing schedule and training will also be at its peak this semester. To say the least my life is a bit of a balancing act!

The intent of this blog - “A College Sailor’s Life” - is to share my experiences as a college sailor and a student with readers. There will be a little bit for everyone each week, whether you’re a high school sailor deciding if college sailing is right for you, a parent of a young sailor, a fellow college sailor, a coach, or anyone interested in the sport!

I hope to share my stories from my weekend regattas, give some insight on the different venues we sail at, reflect on what it takes to stay on top of my studies, what it’s like to be a captain and sail for one of the top college teams in the country, what training is like, what decisions I have to make on the race course, what I do here at US SAILING, and anything else that comes my direction.

Stay tuned for my first “real” entry on Monday!

Knowing Your Destination: Setting the right goals

2011-07-21T11:06:00.005-04:00

By Jessica M. Mohler, Psy.D., CC-AASP
Clinical and Sport Psychologist
United States Naval Academy

I am sure you have experienced this before: two sailors de-rigging at the end of the day, one has a smile on his face and seems excited about how he did on the water, the other appears upset as you hear him saying to his friend he only finished fifth. Or maybe as a parent, you have had one of your children celebrate on a windy day because she sailed around the buoys without capsizing, while your other child is upset with his second place finish. The post sailing day reaction shows us that success to one child can mean failure to another depending on their goals.

Just recently I attended a post race meeting where a 10-year-old child was asked how his day was on the water. He replied, “terrible.” I sat there thinking about whether that child stated the day was terrible because he did not win or place high enough in the standings, or because he had made several mistakes and was swamped by a powerboat. I obviously hoped it was the latter.

We define success and failure through achievement goals (Roberts & Treasure, 1996). It is an individual’s perception of his ability that helps to formulate his goals and then the perception of whether their goals have been met, which defines success and failure. For instance, two young sailors can have the same outcome, place fourth in their division, and have two different reactions. Determining whether you have been successful or failed can have a significant impact on a child’s confidence, their interest in sailing and lastly their effort and persistence with the sport. Ultimately it will dictate how well a sailor performs in the future and if she or he will stay in the sport.

While some children are sailing this summer because mom or dad thought it was a good idea, some children will CHOOSE to come back next year because they enjoyed it and learned or improved a skill. Sport participation peaks around the age of 12 and then begins to decline. Research by Gould and Petchlikoff (1988) * suggests that this happens for three reasons:

1. Perception of competence (Am I a good sailor?)
2. Goal Orientation (Am I sailing to get better or to place at regattas?)
3. Stress (Am I having fun or do I worry too much every time I sail?)

In one study of youth athletes, there were a number of reasons boys and girls wanted to participate including to have fun, to improve skills, to be part of a team, to get exercise, etc… but one reason that did not make the top 10 list for either boys or girls was to win. When children take pride in their progressive improvement of knowledge and ability relative to their past performance, they are more likely to continue sailing. However, when children compare themselves to others, and use a finish in a race as their only motivation, they are more likely to stop sailing. Many of you probably know the story of Michael Jordan. He was cut from the Varsity basketball team in high school, but continued to play on the Junior Varsity and improved his skills, making the Varsity team the next year. Could you imagine if he had stopped playing basketball? Youth skill development does not happen at the same time for each child. While one youth sailor may develop the skills necessary to perform consistently as a skipper in sailing by age 10, another child may not. Remember, just because that 10-year-old could not do well in races at age 10, does not mean he will not be a crew member on a Wednesday night series in the summer as an adult. As well, just because a youth sailor has success at age 10 in sailing around the buoys, does not mean he will want to go back to sailing camp next year. If he becomes too focused on his outcome and has a couple of bad regattas, the chance is pretty low. There are ways for parents and coaches to increase the likelihood that both kids will end up continuing in the sport of sailing, and goal setting can help.

Creating goals that are focused on skill development verses outcome are important at all levels of sport. Even Division I athletes in college can get too caught up in outcomes, increasing their risk of quitting the sport because of what happens to most Division I athletes, they start losing when they get to college. They may have been the best in high school and now may be average, or even worse, riding the bench their entire freshmen year. Having the desire to win, but being able to focus on the skills and abilities necessary is ideal. I think many parents believe that their child’s focus on regatta finishes is some genetic trait that they have little ability to influence. However, parents have an incredible opportunity to guide their youth sailors to focus on what is important. Ginsburg, Durant and Batzell recommend a three step approach to setting goals for children to maximize not only their performance, but also their health and character:
1.    Know your child
“Kids are not just smaller than adults, they are physiologically and psychologically different.” It’s important to take into consideration your child’s CURRENT strengths, weaknesses, both physically and psychologically.
2.    Know yourself
“As parents, we serve our children and ourselves well by becoming aware of our own emotional history, particularly as it pertains to issues of competition, achievement and athletics.” Parents can think about their own sports related behavior that was frustrating, upsetting or exciting and how those feelings can be triggered by their child. Knowing your own trigger points and telling your partner, may result in less negative emotional reactions to your child’s sailing performance.
3.    Know your child’s sports environment
“We must know the community we live in and its approach to sports." Sailing is not immune to the unhealthy aspects of our society. Find a sailing program that fits with your family mission and be as diligent as you would be with any childcare provider or school.

Once you have an awareness of these factors, it’s time to get your child involved. Parents of young children can ask them to draw a picture to show their goals: what they want to achieve this summer; what they want from sailing; what sailing or sailboat racing means to them etc. Encourage them to consider and incorporate all aspects of sailing and sailboat racing (e.g., skill improvement, meeting friends, enjoyment) into their pictures. Getting your youth sailor to draw their goals rather than write them will get them to think more broadly rather than just saying “I want to sail faster” or “I want to do my best.”

For older children, take time to sit down and discuss what they hope to accomplish in sailing; what is their dream: to improve their skill, race in a regatta, make friends, have fun, etc… Once you know what they want to accomplish, ask them to think of 5-10 skills or abilities that are part of accomplishing their goal. Once you have your destination and a set of controllable skills or abilities, it is much easier to set goals that your child can accomplish, thereby building confidence.

Finally, using the acronym SMART, write your goals down.
-    Specific: Identify the skill or ability
-    Measurable: Establish concrete criteria that can be measured
-    Attainable: Make the goal setting steps possible to complete in the time your child has.
-    Realistic: Based on your child’s strengths and weaknesses make sure the goal fits where your child is now.
-    Timely: Have a time frame for achievement so you can assess whether your child’s goals are being accomplished.

While one child may dream of being part of a team and having fun on the water, you may identify the need to be friendly as a skill that your child has to develop. Using the SMART acronym, a goal of meeting one new person at camp for the next three weeks may be a great goal. For another child who is looking to increase her level of competition and dreams of racing at a national event, she may identify the need to learn how to accelerate quickly from luffing. She could create a goal to complete three starting / stopping drills of 10 minutes each over the next week. Ultimately, having success as a youth sailor is based on individual personalities, skills and abilities, it is an ever-developing process. While goal setting may take more time, helping our children get to their destination while creating opportunities for skill building and enjoyment has life-long rewards not only for our children, but for the sport of sailing.

See you on the water!

Dr. Jessica Mohler

*References:
Ginsburg, R., Durant, S. and Baltzell, A. (2006), Whose game is it anyway?

Gould, D. and Petchlikoff, L (1988) Participation motivation and attrition in young athletes. In Children in Sport, 3rd ed, edited by F. Smoll, R. Magill and M. Ash (Champaign, IL; Human Kinetics)

Roberts, G. C., & Treasure, D. C. (1996). Orthogonality of Achievement Goals and Its Relationship to Beliefs About Success and Satisfaction in Sport. Sport Psychologist, 10(4), 398-408.

Developing Youth Sailors: What parents can do to build a strong foundation

2011-06-14T15:54:00.000-04:00

By Jessica M. Mohler, Psy.D., CC-AASP
Clinical and Sport Psychologist
United States Naval Academy

Jessica Mohler is a clinical and sports psychologist, and a sailing mom too. In this article, Mohler provides an interesting outlook on parenting youth athletes from a sailing perspective and makes recommendations that will help you build a strong foundation for your youth sailor.

I am a sailor. I started at sailing camp at the age of 10. I competed in Lasers during high school and as a varsity sailor in college. I went on to teach and coach the sport to children and adults. My current sailing endeavors include crewing on a J-22. Along the way I became a clinical and sport psychologist. I have now taken on my most challenging role, being a parent of a child who is interested in sport, including sailing.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance you are a parent who enjoys the sport of sailing and wants the best for your child, whether that means simply learning how to sail, or competing in sailboat racing. Sailing is a skill that when taught at a young age can become a lifelong sport and hobby. While parents want their children to succeed, providing guidance can be challenging and there is never one right answer. I hope these recommendations will help you build a strong foundation for your youth sailor, not only for competing at a high level, but also to develop a lifelong enjoyment of sailing. Sport psychologists agree that sport participation can help children learn important lessons, however, they also agree that it is not the sport itself, but the people who surround the child in the sport, such as parents, coaches, teammates, competitors and administrators, who build character in our children. Building a foundation for excellence as an athlete and as an adult, in many ways, can take the same path. In fact sailing provides a great analogy for this process of development.

If you think about a day of sailing, many of the decisions you make as you get ready and sail to your destination are similar to raising your child. First, you choose where you are going, and gather information about the weather, the current, the time you have and the distance. Similarly setting goals, deciding where you are going and what is important while thinking about what is realistic for your child factoring in his or her abilities is an important step. You pack all your gear for the day, selecting what is necessary for a day sail, just as your child builds his abilities and skills that are consistent with his goals as a sailor. You decide who is going to take the tiller, and as the parent you decide when to let your child steer or when it is best that you take the helm through a narrow channel. Just as you provide guidance and rules for your child, parents need to know when to let their child be independent and when he needs you to intervene to provide guidance. The skipper constantly adjusts to the breeze by looking at the tell tales and trimming the sails, adjusting to the environment so that the course is maintained. Parents need to do this with their child in sport as well, knowing your child strengths and weaknesses as they grow and change is important as you provide guidance through all of life’s headers and lifts.

Finally arriving at your destination, whether it’s an anchorage and picnic lunch, or a national regatta, requires all of these steps. I remember teaching at J World, a sailing school for adults. The owner of J World, an experienced sailor and educator, instructed us to stand near the stern so at any moment we could nudge the tiller with our foot to avert a crisis. We always started the weeklong instruction standing right near the tiller, but as the week progressed, we could move farther away, always staying within reach of the tiller. In so many ways this is what we do as parents, allowing our children to slowly have more independence, to steer their own boat, always ready at any moment to provide direction and get them on their course. I know parents who have planned for a day sail, but forgot to check the weather, only to end up in a storm, soaking wet without ever reaching their destination. While there are lessons to learn in those types of experiences, they may not be much fun. Ultimately research supports that the more enjoyment a child has in sport, the more likely they are to continue in the sport, play harder and have more success.

In the Book Whose Game is it Anyway?, a book by Richard Ginsburg, Steve Durant and Amy Baltzell, the authors suggest that the first step to building excellence in your child is to develop a family mission statement. While many families can involve their children in this process, as parents you decide what is important for your child. Most parents probably have some ideas about the characteristics and values they want their child to have, but it is easy to get caught up in everyday life and what other families are doing, which can detract from your ideals. Developing a mission statement is not simply a thought you have one time, but should be written down and posted around your home, so that both you and your children are reminded about what is important. These authors suggest that building a mission statement can be facilitated by answering two questions:

“1. When my child is 21 years old, what kind of person do I want him or her to be, and how will sports help us, as parents, get our child there?
2. What are the three most important virtues or lessons that I want my child to learn through involvement in sports?”

If you have answered these two questions for your family, you have built a foundation to help your child not only learn how to sail well, but to also learn life lessons that will serve them beyond the water. For example, your 12 year old daughter comes home from sailing after her first week of summer sailing, and asks if she can be part of the traveling team. To answer this question you may try to see how this decision fits with your values of compassion, honesty and pursuit of excellence. Can being part of the traveling team build these values and how as a parent can you ensure those values come first? Let’s say as a parent you decide it does fit with your family mission and you decide to let her travel. After her second regatta, she comes to you because the girls on the race team are not as friendly to her as her friends from summer camp. What will you say? How will you guide her decision to stay on the team or to go back to the-learn-to-sail program? Alternatively, what if your son comes home from sailing one day and says he wants to quit because he keeps coming in last around the buoys. How will you provide guidance? Is doing well in racing the only reason you continue to sail? Having a family mission statement may help your daughter and son cope more effectively with the challenges they will face. When you build a family mission statement, decision making becomes more meaningful.

In one of the first chapters of Whose Game is it, anyway? , the authors conclude that
“Ultimately, raising a healthy child who demonstrates good character is neither immediately gratifying nor guaranteed. We know it cannot be purchased. It cannot be measured by daily results like some sort of stock report. The path to this goal is neither easy nor well traveled. We have to live with and manage our own anxieties, disappointments, fears, and frustrations while staying the course with our children.”

As I said at the beginning of this article, there is no one right way to develop a strong foundation for your children, but by thinking about the values and ideals you want your child to build in the sport of sailing, you can be more confident that you are making the right decisions for YOUR family. Now the foundation is built, but what comes next? I will be continuing to write about youth development in sailing each month including my top five tips for developing excellence:

1)    Knowing your destination: Setting the right goals
2)    Reading the tell tales: Taking cues from your child to develop success
3)    Preparing for shifts in the breeze: Building confidence and character through sailing
4)    When to grab the tiller: Encouraging and setting limits for performance excellence
5)    Working with the crew: Communicating with your child’s instructors and coaches

See you on the water.

Regards,
Dr. Jessica Mohler

For more information on youth sport:
Ginsburg, R., Durant, S. and Baltzell, A. (2006). Whose Game Is It Anyway?