by Jen Mitchell, Airwaves Senior Writer

Brought to you by Mauri Pro Sailing

Notes From a Very Fortunate High School Sailing Coach

Roy Williams is the varsity sailing coach at St. George’s School in Newport, Rhode Island.  Roy grew up in North Wales in the United Kingdom, where he lived just a couple hundred yards from the local sailing club.  Although both his parents were sailors, they did not pressure him to sail, but he did naturally drift into it.  He participated in summer sailing and competed in high school level regattas, such as the North Wales High School Championship.  He grew up with both fleet racing and team racing, and in the 1980’s moved to the United States.  He has been coaching at St. George’s for twenty-one years now, and has developed one of the strongest high school sailing programs in the country.  He will openly admit and joke that the St. George’s program, like Tabor, Hotchkiss, and Portsmouth Abbey, is unique in the great resources there are to work with.  Being a private boarding school, St. George’s is able to offer some benefits that not every high school can, like a great fleet of boats and excellent facilities.  Taking into account Roy’s coaching experience and St. George’s excellent sailing reputation I took advantage of a Skype chat to learn more from him.

I asked Roy what he enjoys about coaching high school and what has kept him at it for so long.  Roy is also a calculus teacher at SG, and it is this educating aspect that he takes the most pleasure in.  Roy explains that he “likes to see results, and with high school sailing there are big improvements in a short amount of time.”  When students come to the team they do not necessarily know much about high school or college sailing, even if they have been competing in youth summer sailing programs.  It really is a different type of sailing than summer sailing; it takes place on shorter courses without trapeze and spinnakers. Roy is rewarded by “seeing the students get into the sailing and develop confidence and skills.”  A lot of students have not team raced and he likes to see when sailors discover that team racing is one of their favorite aspects of high school sailing.

Most of the sailors who join the SG sailing team have some sailing experience, but every year they take on some complete beginners who have never been in a boat before.  Roy reflected that some of the best crews on the team have been literal walk-ons; they were already athletic people who picked up on sailing.  As Roy quoted, he thinks from Ken Legler (head coach at Tufts University), it is “easier to turn an athlete into a sailor, than a sailor into an athlete.”

Most of the varsity sailors at SG go on to sail in college, however some of the best sailors look to other facets of college they are interested in and will choose not to sail.  “It really varies because some of the team members will only look at schools that sail, but some will choose to not make sailing their key element,” Roy goes on to explain that there are a few things high school sailors should know when it comes to sailing in high school and then onto college; one of those things is that sailing is not an NCAA sport, it is not a gateway into college, academics REALLY matter.  Another piece of high school sailing students should know is what a significant time commitment it is.  At SG they sail five or six days a week in the spring.  It is a fairly short season, so it can be very time consuming, especially when it comes to competing in the various qualifiers that lead up to Nationals.

Roy feels that the season is really not about Nationals for them.  Of course they will go if they qualify, but he feels that you cannot prepare for it until you have qualified, so focusing on getting to New England’s and sailing well there is their primary goal.  He does goal setting with his team so that they can track where they are at the beginning of the season and then revisit their goals to see how they are progressing.  He really feels that his main goal with the team is improvement because if you are always improving the rest will take care of itself, “ practice how you race and race how you practice.”  He wants to be sure that the goals the team sets are relevant and that it is not nationals that drive their season, but long term goals that do.

It soon becomes apparent to me that Roy is the ultimate educator, he loves to teach and give the kids the tools they need to succeed, but leaves it up to the students to apply the tools, and figure out the details for themselves.  An example of this is at the beginning of the season when the sailors are sorting out whom they will sail with. They rotate a lot and usually personalities and skill levels will dictate who ends up with whom.  Of course weight will play a little bit of a factor and the exceptions when a very knowledgeable crew will end up with a less experienced skipper to help bring them up to speed.  It is this depth in the team that fosters their talent and success.

One of the challenges that Roy can face with teenage sailors is that their egos creep out and take over the team concept, “I address their egos by talking to them about the differences in task and ego orientation, how it develops with age, and how it affects the behavior on the water.” He also explains the “storming, forming, norming, performing, and adjourning” steps of team building.  “The more they know about their own psychological development, the better.”  When he then asks them, “why are you behaving this way?” They have the background tool to reflect on this question, Roy finds that they can easily see what is really agitating them and work it out.  Another useful aspect of the sailing team is that the older sailors set a benchmark, and when young sailor egos join the team, this benchmark proves valuable in putting the young sailors in their place. It is a tool that is more effective than anything a coach can do for the team.  The older kids help to teach the younger kids.

Much like the students need to keep their egos in check, Roy does the same with his own ego.  He has learned in his coaching experience, that he needs to keep his ego separate from the performance of his team.  “I had to learn that teams will come and go and there will be good years and bad years, you simply cannot treat the teams’ performance as a reflection of yourself.”  He now knows that he cannot expect the team to be the same from year to year, each year is a new team.  Roy’s mantra is to “innovate, educate, motivate, and appreciate.”  He keeps perspective that this is a high school sport and coaching is teaching, “I can get frustrated with the team, but it is when they make a mistake and you know that they know better.”

Some common mistakes that Roy sees high school sailors make, is when they first come to high school sailing, they do not realize how important boat handling is in short course
sailing and team racing.  Trying to apply long course tactics to short course racing does not work either.  Another common mistake is when “sailors cannot separate their performance from their egos, the best sailors realize that they will have some bad events and that there will be people who will beat them from time to time.”  There has been a tremendous amount of growth in high school sailing, the level of sailing is much higher and there are more teams participating.  Roy believes that the top high school sailors go to college and make an impact earlier in their careers, “college freshman can now join a college team and be competitive right away and travel to big regattas.”

Roy likes to keep himself competitive as well, sailing avidly in the Sheilds fleet, where he was 4^th at Nationals and 4^th in 110 Nationals.  He also competed on Goose in the 6 Meter World’s and was the top U.S. boat.  He will continue to pursue his own sailing and racing.  He finds it fun to be on the racecourse now competing against or with sailors that he used to coach,  “It is an unusual sport that you can continue to be competitive after many years.”  I asked Roy if he would continue to coach indefinitely and his response was: “I will as long as I enjoy doing it…and yes, I still enjoy it!”

A Bit About St. Georges School Sailing Team: