By Airwaves writer & Brown U. sailing team member Lydia Whiteford
The entire spring season, and really the entire year in college sailing, has been progressing towards this: teams all over the country have had or will have in the next week or so the qualifying regatta that will get them to nationals.
The college sailing national championships are quite an ordeal. They are made up of 3 parts, all of which are qualified for separately. The first is the Women’s division fleet racing nationals, which are sponsored by Sperry. They kick off nationals every year, and are conducted over 4 days. The first day and a half (ending on the second day of sailing at noon) is the “semifinals”. In the past, the top first or second place finishers in the regional qualifiers would advance straight to nationals, and would not have to compete in the semifinals. Then, the top 9 from the semifinal regatta would advance to nationals to join them. This year, however, no boats got to advance straight to nationals, and will all be competing in the semifinals. This means that the semifinal regatta will be split into 2 fleets, with the top nine from each advancing to nationals. Nationals and semis are all held in the same place, so if your team advances it is effectively like one long regatta.
Directly after women’s, the Team-Racing nationals begins, taking place over 3 days and sponsored by Annapolis Performance Sailing. This regatta has no semifinals, as the nature of the regatta eliminates people as the regatta progresses. It is set up so that one or two “round robins” are sailed, in which every team faces each other and then their records are calculated to do the same thing but with the top 12 teams, then the top 6 teams, or how ever the regatta chair decides to set it up. Gradually, teams are eliminated until there is a winner.
Finally, after team racing, the College Sailing National Fleet Race championship is held, and is sponsored by Gill. Historically, the semifinals for this event were separate from the championship, with the regattas taking place at different times. However, this year they’ve changed it so that it is structured like women’s, with the semifinals and the championship being back to back. So, just like women’s, all the teams that qualified out of their district will compete and the top 9 from 2 different fleets will make up the national championship roster.
With so many policy changes this year, the qualifiers schedule was much different across the board than it has been in the past. This year, ICSA decided to construct the season so that all major team racing was to take place in the first half of the season and all major fleet racing in the second half. Usually, the qualifiers would both be regattas that were almost back-to-back in the middle of May. This year, however, they were separated because of the regatta schedule, and therefore everything seemed to be bumped up. Now, most districts have completed all 3 of their qualifiers, with more than a month of post-season until the big event. Qualifiers put quite a strain on the sailors, no matter the difficulty of the district they are. These are the regattas when coaches pull out all the stops: coming to regattas with an armada of sailors, often times multiple boat’s worth for each division. There are heavy crews, light crews, and everything in between. Many sailors have to constantly switch modes, as many of them sail in all three categories of qualifiers. Some of the larger districts, such as MAISA and NEISA, are so competitive that you see completely different teams going to each event, and qualifying for one does not mean by any stretch that you will qualify for all. So, with the season drawing to an end, congrats to all of those teams that have made it and good luck to those still qualifying. The ICSA nationals will be held at the U.S. Naval Academy and St. Mary’s College of Maryland from May 27th to June 6th, and here is a preliminary list of the qualifiers (many schools are still undergoing their qualifying events at the moment)
Co-Ed Fleet Racing:
University of Michigan
University of Minnesota
University of Wisconsin
University of Notre Dame
University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee
Yale University
Dartmouth College
Boston College
Coast Guard
Brown University
Tufts University
Bowdoin College
Connecticut College
Harvard University
Georgetown University
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
U.S. Naval Academy
Old Dominion University
University of Pennsylvania
Fordham
University of Virginia
Washington College
Stanford University
University of Hawaii
University of California at Santa Barbara
University of Southern Florida
College of Charleston
Eckerd College
University of Jacksonville
Clemson University
New College of Florida
Women’s Fleet Racing:
Western Washington University
College of Charleston
Eckerd College
University of Southern Florida
Georgetown University
U.S. Naval Academy
Old Dominion University
Cornell University
Hobart and William Smith
Fordham
Yale University
Boston College
Dartmouth College
University of Rhode Island
Brown University
Coast Guard
Bowdoin College
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Texas A&M
Stanford University
University of Hawaii
University of California at Santa Barbara
Team-Racing:
Texas A&M
University of Wisconsin
University of Michigan
Roger Williams University
Yale University
Boston College
Tufts University
University of Washington
College of Charleston
University of Southern Florida
St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Georgetown University
U.S. Naval Academy
Old Dominion University
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