Sail1Design welcomes new Airwaves team member, Martha Pitt. Click here to read Martha’s Bio. Below is her first piece on college crewing.
By Martha Pitt, Airwaves Staff Writer.
College sailing has been changing significantly over the past few years – teams are getting stronger, more physical, and becoming a deeper, more universally competitive and athletically-serious group. While one may find it easy to attribute these changes to improvements in skippers’ performances, as skippers tend to get much of the recognition and glory in the sport, the increased level and skill of the crews entering college sailing, and then their improvements throughout their college careers, have raised the bar in many sailing programs and therefore made the sport nationally more competitive. In the past, students of the optimal size and athletic build could step into a boat for the very first time as a freshman and by junior or senior year be an All-American crew; now, sailors are coming into college with extensive experience from high school and junior sailing, intensifying the competition from the beginning. These accomplished crews are raising the level of skill needed to make the team and sail with the best skippers in their respective programs, and are an extremely important factor to a team’s success on the national circuit.
Few experienced skippers would or could deny the importance of having a well-trained and skilled crew in the front of the boat. Sloppy boat handling, misplaced bodyweight, or a poorly trimmed jib can make a huge difference in a competitive college fleet. But on top of athletic ability and necessary sailing skills, crews need to have an exuberant amount of patience, mental flexibility, and psychological prowess to do their own job as well as keep their skippers on track. Crews need to be able to understand racing just as well as a skipper, and understand the way their own skippers understand racing so that they can anticipate maneuvers and provide productive insight and information. These qualities, extensive and extremely subtle, are what set great crews apart from the rest, and can make the difference for a successful team.
The bottom line is that crewing in a double handed boat is hard work, both mentally and physically, and the entry-level standards for good college crews are rising as the sport gets more competitive on the national level. I talked to a few of college’s expert crews to gain some insight into how they got to the level at which they are today. Neither one of crews has been recognized as an All-American, and yet they come from two of the strongest college sailing programs in the country, both have experience with success at the highest collegiate level, and know what it takes to get there. They understand the important role that each individual crew plays on a big team, and how their individual performance, regardless of accolades, can make the whole team stronger. Their advice should serve a guide to those looking to become the best possible collegiate sailor that they can be.
Robert Miglaccio photo
Briana Provancha, who grew up sailing in San Diego, CA, is currently senior at Boston College and has been an extremely accomplished sailor since her early sailing years, competing in youth world championships and high school nationals. Since her freshman year of college, she has been rostered at almost every national championship in which Boston College has competed, including Women’s, Team Racing, Co-ed’s, and Sloops, winning four of them so far. While most of her time has been put into crewing, she has been skippering more in college a nd has been a force on the women’s circuit. In addition to college sailing, she is currently doing an Olympic campaign with fellow Eagle Annie Haeger in the women’s 470 class.
photo by Wilson Stout
Brooke Thomson, a senior at St. Mar y’s College of Maryland, is from New port Beach, CA where she grew up sailing Sabots as a child, then moved onto high school sailing, competing in several national championships and winning the Mallory her senior year. Though limited somewhat by injuries throughout college, she has been an integral part of the St Mary’s team in her four years in college, starting on the varsity team her freshman year and helping to get skippers to a higher level of competition. Aside from college sailing, she continues to do plenty of racing, and will be touring New England with the US Sailing Roadshow this summer to help promote the sport.
Why did you decide to become a crew?
Provancha: I got introduced to double-handed boats much earlier than a lot of people. I was in 6th grade and sailed my first Ida Lewis 420 championship when I was just 13. Initially, because I was so young, I just got placed as a crew and I immediately fell in love with it. I loved crewing because I thought trapping was so much fun. At Point Loma High School, I crewed most of the four years and that is when I realized that crewing would be my niche, although I have found a new love for skippering since I have been at Boston College.
Thomson: I had done junior sailing but hadn’t really considered sailing as something serious until high school. For a couple weeks I thought I was just trying it out for fun until I watched one of the better crews on the high school team sail. I simultaneously realized “that looks good” and also “I want to do that.” That day was definitely a turning point, and while the learning process was frustrating at times I had a visual image of what I wanted to be someday.
There are obviously many good crews out there, but what makes a great crew?
Provancha: A great crew doesn’t need to be told what to do. Not only do you have to know the mechanics that are considered crew responsibilities, you also have to understand sail boat racing as well as a skipper in order to recognize and anticipate tactics maneuvers.
Thomson: For many years my opinion has been that the only way to separate a good crew from an average crew is that a good crew can make any skipper sail better than they normally would. Some of my most rewarding experiences as a crew has been sailing with a mid-fleet skipper and bringing them to the top of the fleet, or sailing with bottom-fleet skipper and bringing them up to the mid-fleet. Crewing is so subjective it’s hard to tell what makes a good crew, but I think this is one area where you can distinguish the crew’s talent as being separate from the skipper.
What are the greatest challenges that you face as a crew?
Provancha: The biggest challenge I feel about crewing is the ability to multi-task extremely well. There are so many of things that have to go through your mind at any given second and it takes a lot of time in the boat to learn what is the most important thing to focus on at that particular moment. Another extremely challenging thing about crewing is that you have to keep your skipper mentally checked in to the race, despite how you are doing in the race.
Thomson: I would say that some of the biggest challenges of being a crew is that you don’t necessarily have control over what’s happening on the race course or who you sail with. For example, at a national regatta it can make a crew feel really frustrated and even guilty when the team or your skipper isn’t sailing as well as anticipated. I think most crews have also sat on the side lines of certain regattas when they feel like they should be sailing. I think that’s one of the most irritating parts of crewing is that you can’t really predict when you’re work is going to pay off.
What is your favorite thing about crewing? Least favorite?
Provancha: My favorite part about crewing is being physical in the boat. My least favorite part about crewing is the bruises all over my legs. No matter how hard I try, I just always seem to accumulate new ones.
Thomson: I think overall I just love being able to make the boat go fast. I love moments in a race when it’s clear that great boat speed and boat handling launches you ahead of the fleet. I also love the moments where everything in the boat feels in sync and you and the skipper are just locked into the boat and the race. I think one of my least favorite things about crewing is that when things don’t go well- the crew gets really beaten up (both mentally and physically from the boat) which is hard on a crew that really wants to win.
Were there any hurdles that you had to overcome to get to where you are now?
Provancha: Unfortunately, not everyone is built appropriately for an athletic position, but my college coach, Greg Wilkinson, has taught me that fortunately our bodies are able to change. I gained close to 20 pounds of muscle this past year and a half [for my 470 campaign], and this has been a very challenging process. I spend hours and hours a day in the Varsity weight room working with the BC athletic trainers in hopes of making a step closer to fulfilling my collegiate and Olympic goals.
Thomson: I definitely had my own hurdles, and everybody’s obstacles tend to be pretty different. In high school sailing I would say that it was just really hard for me to get acknowledged, however that tended to motivate me to just keep sailing better. It wasn’t until college that I felt like I got the credit I had worked for. In college I had a stellar freshman year, but was injured my sophomore year. Taking a semester off to get three surgeries was a journey that I hope not that many potential crews need to worry about but one advantage of taking some time off from school and sailing was that it was definitely a reality check. It make me realize how important it is to balance academics and a non-sailing life along with being able to sail seriously.
Aside from sailing technique, what are some other components to being a good crew?
Provancha: People joke that the crew is the therapist of the boat, but from experience I have learned this to be true. You have to stay level headed regardless of how you are performing. Also, a good crew always brings a bailer and cassette tape to practice!
Thomson: I think to be a good crew you really have to be a good listener, observant, and tough. You have to be pretty resilient to not let things get to you and just keep on sailing well. On the other hand, you also have to have an intuitive feeling for the person or people you’re sailing with and what’s happening in the boat. Perhaps it’s a fragile balance between being very sensitive to your circumstances and aware of what’s happening around you while also being tough enough to not let it affect you.
What kind of training do you do, both on and off the water?
Provancha: As I mentioned before, I spend a lot of time in the BC Varsity Weight room trying to become one of the strongest crews on both the collegiate and Olympic circuits. I feel that being strong allows you to be physical and that equates to speed. My goal is to make lifting weights hard in order to make sailing easy. This is a philosophy that the BC sailing team believes
in and as a team we take the weight room extremely seriously.
Thomson: On-the-water training for me has typically been whatever a coach has planned for practice. The best way I learned how to sail was that I had a coach when I was starting out who would sail in the boat with me almost every day and train me- and that’s still where I learned most of what I know. Off the water, I’m actually a big advocate of Pilates. Unlike yoga, it’s designed for dancers and trains you to be light-footed but strong.
What advice would you give to freshmen crews, just joining a college team?
Provancha: My first piece of advice to incoming freshman would be to really try and get some gym time before attending your first team lift. I can assure you that your coach will appreciate it and that it will not go unnoticed. Also, if you aren’t familiar with shroud tell tales, become familiar with them! Trust me, it makes sailing so much easier. They tell you where the wind is coming from, when to gybe on the downwind and if boats are in your bad air.
Thomson: For college freshman crew, I think the biggest thing is to just live in the moment and not over think the dynamics of the college team. I had a pretty successful freshman year, and I think something that really contributed to that was just focusing completely on myself and always sailing the best that I could. Whether you’ve done high school sailing or not, I think it’s always important to just absorb as much as possible in each practice and always be pushing yourself without getting distracted by what might be going on with the rest of the team.
If there was one thing that you could say to every skipper out there, what would it be?
Provancha: Before you think that the reason you are going slow is because your crew messed up, just ask yourself if you are sailing the boat perfectly around the whole race course. More times than not, the answer will be no and in that case try to focus on your mistakes instead of your crew’s.
Thomson: For skippers, I would say if you want your crew(s) to help you the most, you need to truly consider them a teammate and partner. If you’re sailing with a crew that doesn’t have the sailing resume that you might have, if you treat your crew as a valuable part of the race, they will respond to that and be able to help you more. Saying “thank you” and “good job” after a race or regatta is nice, but where it really matters is the basic on-water communication. The crew needs to know that what they’re saying or doing is making a difference in the boat, and making sure that you guys are sharing responsibility will make a crew able to contribute a lot more to your sailing.
Any other comments about your sailing experiences that you think might be important for younger sailors?
Provancha: You don’t win national championships by sailing in the sun. This was told to me my freshman year by a senior when it was snowing and we had practice. It really stuck with me and is something that I will never forget.
