ICSA Team Race Rankings #2 Are Out!
You can find the Open rankings HERE and the Women’s Rankings HERE.
Open Rankings
For this edition we welcomed Coach Annabell Carrington from the College of Charleston to our rankings panel, which already consisted of John Mollicone (Brown), Chris Klevan (Stanford), Charles Higgins (Tulane), and Brendan Feeney (Fordham).
On the open side of things, Harvard still sits confidently at the top and has repeatedly been called “the team to beat.” The defending champions just claimed their second win at the Liam O’Keefe Team Race with a 7–0 record. Extremely impressive results. Extremely hard to beat.
No team race ranking is complete without Roger Williams in the mix. Feeney put it best saying, “When I think master-of-the-fundamentals in sports I think of Roger Federer on the court and Roger Williams on the Digital N. From starting, to communication, to boathandling this team makes it their mission to be at or very near the top” of the fleet.
Rounding out the top three in this second edition of the rankings is Stanford. Mollicone noted the team’s recent regatta success saying, “Same team as last year that finished 4th at Open Team Race Nationals. Perfect 10-0 at the Nelson Roltsch at Tulane last weekend against solid Navy, Tulane, and Charleston teams” while Feeney even went so far as to propose them as the possible “fastest team in the country.”
Brown slots in at number four, with the entire panel agreeing that this team is solidly placing itself in the same league as the other top three teams. Do we already know who our final four at nationals will be?
Navy is currently ranked as the top team from MAISA. Carrington notes their strong returning sailors, while Mollicone is expecting great things but is looking to see how the team stacks up within MAISA at the Marchiando.
Charleston from SAISA and Tulane from SEISA are holding their own in the rankings, sitting 7th and 8th respectively. Tulane will even get the benefit of nationals on their home waters this spring.
From MAISA, St. Mary’s is currently ranked 12th, but we’ve seen them improve greatly as the season goes on, especially as teams visit for spring break practices. Another MAISA team, Hobart and William Smith, is making its climb back toward a nationals berth, with Higgins noting that results in the coming weeks will prove just how good this team can be.
Overall, in this second edition of the rankings we can see that the top four teams are distinguishing themselves early on, but for the rest of the fleet there is still a lot in play.
Women’s Rankings
In the women’s fleet it is no surprise that the Stanford women are sitting at the top. Mollicone wonders if this team will “lose a single race this season,” and frankly, so do we.
Brown holds the number two spot and, with a strong open team to practice against, our panel is confident this team will continue to build as the season progresses. With a strong group of returners, their top team finished 2nd in the recent Harvard Women’s Team Race.
Yale is ranked third with Carrington calling them, “a fast group with new starters coming in hot”. Mollicone said, “Despite turning over all of their starting skippers from the past 4 years, they are reloaded and were able to win their first event of the season.”
Georgetown and Cornell sit back-to-back (6th and 7th respectively) in the rankings and will likely battle it out to be MAISA’s top team. This Georgetown team is coming off a win at the ODU Women’s Team Race.
Charleston is looking like the top team from SAISA ranking 9th, but coaches are waiting to see how they perform when they head north for the Dellenbaugh.
There is a lot more sailing to come in the women’s team race calendar, and more interconference events will start to establish what we can expect as teams begin setting their sights on New Orleans.
Expect the next ranking in about two weeks. There are several events (many of them interconference) coming up in the next 2 weekends. These results could very well shake things up before the next edition of the rankings drops.
Stay tuned! Team race season is just getting started.
Check out our pre-season/week 1 breakdown HERE. Photos are from Rob Migliaccio can be found HERE.
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