COLLEGE SAILING 101: Inside the World of College Sailing for Sailors, & Parents of Prospective College Sailors

 
WHAT:                  COLLEGE SAILING NIGHT
WHERE:                Severn Sailing Association, Annapolis, MD
WHEN:                  04 December 2015           1900-2100
LIVE VIDEO
Come join us for a round-table discussion/Q&A session at Severn Sailing Association on Friday evening, 04 December 2016. Learn more about the not-so-mysterious world of college sailing from some of the top college coaches in the country.
Sponsored by Sail1Design, registration is now CLOSED, we are FULL!!  Don’t worry, Sail1Design will publish a web-based taping of the event!! Stay tuned for more information!!

Schedule
Panelists and moderator will deliver a brief synopsis of college sailing, following the outline below. We will then open up the presentation to questions, followed by an informal meet and greet opportunity.
Topics will include:

• Inside the ICSA: The organizational structure of the sport. What it is, and what it isn’t
• The Conferences (Districts)
• Types of Teams & a Few Team Profiles
  • Varsity vs. club
• The Actual Sailing Itself
  • Types of regattas
  • COED, Women’s, Team Racing, Singlehanded, Match racing, Keelboats
• Boats Used
• Life of a College Sailor
  • Commitment
  • Travel
  • Social life
• Eligibility
• Recruiting 101
  • How coaches view players
  • How coaches view parents

Moderator
Tom Sitzmann, Director of Sailing, Severn Sailing Association
The SSA Director of Sailing, Tom has coached sailing and directed sailing programs from Maine to Annapolis, beginning with stints at Tufts and Dartmouth Colleges as an assistant. Tom was also an assistant offshore & dinghy coach at the USNA, head intercollegiate coach at Bowdoin College, and more recently head coach at Severn School, where he guided the team to a National championship, the first and only Chesapeake Bay school ever to win the prestigious Mallory Trophy.
Tom has a great deal of dinghy racing experience, competing successfully in the Laser, J/24, and J/22, winning several regional and district championships in those classes, both in New England and the Mid-Atlantic.
Panelists
Bill Ward, Head Coach, St. Mary’s College
In nearly 15 years of collegiate coaching, Ward’s teams have won five national championships. He also had the honor of coaching Team USA at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games. In 2008, Ward was named the National Coach of the Year by the U.S. Olympic Sailing Committee. He was also on the coaching staff of the U.S. Sailing Team for the 2007 Pan Am Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Ward served as the team leader/head coach for the U.S. Inter Collegiate Sailing Association Team competing in the BUSA Tour in England and Ireland in 2005. He graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 1996, where he was a two-time All-America honorable mention (1994 and 1995) and team captain. Ward led Georgetown to the program’s first-ever appearances at the ICSA Dinghy and Sloop National Championships.
Michael Callahan, Head Coach, Georgetown University
Michael J. Callahan was selected to be Head Coach of the Georgetown University Sailing Team (GUST) in August 1998. Callahan initially joined the athletic department as an assistant sailing coach in August 1997. During the 1999-2000, 2000-01 and again in the 2005-06 season, Callahan was the recipient of the Outstanding Coaching Achievement Award, an honor presented by Hoyas Unlimited to the most outstanding Hoya coach from the past season. To date, the award has been bestowed upon Callahan more than any other Georgetown coach.
Ian Burman, Head Coach, US Naval Academy
Ian Burman is in his eighth year at the helm of the Navy intercollegiate sailing team in 2015-16. In 2014-15, the team had top-10 finishes at both the ICSA Team Coed Dinghy National Championship and the ICSA Team Racing National Championship. Senior Mary Hall capped off her career by being named an ICSA All-American Women’s Skipper. Hall was also named the MAISA Women’s Sailor of the Year and to the All-MAISA Women’s Skipper First Team and the All-MAISA Coed Skipper Second Team. Fellow senior Emma Ferris was named an ICSA All-American Women’s Crew.
Scott Iklé, Head Coach Hobart/William Smith Colleges
Clearly, one of the premier sailing coaches in the nation, Scott Iklé has been at the helm of the Hobart and William Smith sailing program since 1993. The 1984 graduate of Hobart inherited a struggling team, built it into a consistent national championship contender, and reached the pinnacle of college sailing in 2005, not once, but twice.
John Vandemoer, Head Coach, Stanford
John Vandemoer has taken Stanford sailing to new heights, and looks to continue to do so during the 2015-16 season, his eighth on The Farm. During his tenure, Stanford has reached the national championships in all three divisions in each of his seven seasons, finishing as high as fourth in coed racing (2014), fifth in women’s racing (2013) and third in the team race (2014, 2015). All said and done, Vandemoer’s Stanford squads have won 20 of 21 spring conference crowns in the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference.
Michael Collins, Ass’t Coach, USMMA King’s Point
Michael Collins enters his second season as the assistant coach of the Kings Point intercollegiate varsity sailing team.  Collins graduated from Old Dominion University in 2008 where he earned his Bachelors of Science degree in Sports Management.  While at Old Dominion he competed on their intercollegiate varsity sailing team.  He served as captain of the team his senior year.
Charles Higgins, Ass’t Coach, Old Dominion University
Charles Higgins enters his seventh year as an assistant coach at his alma mater in the 2014-15 season. He returned to ODU three years ago to continue his collegiate coaching career after one year of coaching at the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point. Higgins was an impact sailor in his career at Old Dominion as a leader in team racing and sloop sailing.
John Norfleet, Head Coach, Fordham University
Fordham is a member of the Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association (MAISA), one of seven regional conferences of the Intercollegiate Sailing Association of North America (ICSA), the governing body of College Sailing in the USA.
Zach Runci, Head Coach, SUNY Maritime College
Zach Runci joined the Maritime waterfront staff as the assistant sailing coach in the Fall of 2013, and will now be entering his second season as the team’s head coach beginning in the fall of 2015. In his first season as head coach, Runci led the Privateers to one of their most successful campaigns in recent program history as the team was nationally ranked on several occasions through the 2014-15 season.
Linden Dahlkemper, Ass’t Coach, US Coast Guard Academy
Coach Dahlkemper was a four year member of the intercollegiate sailing team as a cadet, splitting her time between the women’s team and coed team as both a skipper and a crew member.
After graduating in 2008, she spent two years on the CG Cutter WALNUT, a buoy tender homeported in Honolulu, HI.  Then, from 2010 to 2012, she was stationed as the Operations Officer on the CG Cutter ASPEN, in San Francisco, CA.
Upon her return to the Academy as an instructor in the Department of Humanities, Dahlkemper joined the coaching staff as a volunteer assistant, working closely with the team during the week in practice and during weekend competitions. Focusing primarily on the younger members of the team, she assists with growing the depth needed to sustain a nationally competitive program.
Dahlkemper also serves as the intercollegiate sailing team’s Faculty Affiliate and spends her summers training cadets on the Academy’s L-44 sloops.
Sam Patterson, Chris Craven, Captains, U. Virginia Club Sailing Team
The Sailing Association at UVA is a student run club sport open to all UVa students of any skill level. We are an active group of sailors interested in racing, recreational sailing, and social events. We sail out of Lake Anna Yacht Club where we keep a fleet of nine Collegiate FJs and one Hobie 16, as well as two brand new Carolina Skiffs.
We will likely have more coaches, and several alumnus representatives from Bowdoin College, Tufts University,  GW University, U. Vermont, Syracuse, and more. Also, many teams will send detailed brochures/recruiting information on their teams, so this will be an invaluable opportunity to learn about college sailing!