Norton and Nadler

Pearce and Callahan

Rogers and Rubin

June 6, 2003
Courtesy of collegesailing.org

GROSSE POINTE FARMS, Mich.–After the second day of the 2003 ICSA North American Team Race Championship, defending champion Harvard University leads with a record of five wins and two losses. Hobart and William Smith Colleges and the University of Southern California follow closely with identical 4-3 marks.

The Colleges took three skippers and three crew to the ICSA Team Race Championships. Senior Sam Rogers (Breck School/Excelsior, Minn.) and juniors Ed Norton (Tabor Academy/Fair Haven, N.J.) and John Pearce (Ithaca/Ithaca, N.Y.) are serving as skippers, while senior Amanda Callahan (Notre Dame Academy/Canton, Mass.), junior Alexis Rubin (Edmund Burke/Potomac, Md.), and first-year Augusta Nadler (Tabor Academy/Marion, Mass.) are the crews.

Clear, sunny skies made for great spectating at the Crescent Sail Yacht Club, but patchy winds were trying for race committee and sailors alike. Twenty-seven of 28 planned races in the “winners” round robin (the top 8 teams from yesterday’s racing) were completed today. Due to postponements and delays from the championship round, the consolation round wasn’t held as planned this afternoon.

St. Mary's College and Tufts University each have a 3-3 record and are scheduled to meet each other tomorrow morning in the final race of the championship round robin. The winner, by virtue of their 4-3 record, will join Harvard, HWS and USC for a double final four round robin tomorrow to declare the champion.

Seventy-two races have been held on Lake St. Clair over the past two days in new Vanguard 420s provided by Vanguard Sailboats, a partner in the ICSA Growth and Development Project. The University of Michigan and the Midwest Collegiate Sailing Association are the hosts of the championship.

In the team racing discipline, two teams each sail three boats at one time. The team with the better combined score at the finish is declared the winner. In response to the growing popularity of team racing, ICSA increased the number of participating teams in this year’s contest from 12 to 14. Also new this year is a “starboard N” course with an upwind offset mark. The race committee has used the N-course in a majority of the races, although port-triangles were used for a short period of time.

The format for this year’s event differs from previous years. Schools were seeded into two groups of seven teams. Yesterday, a round-robin within each group was completed. Records did not carry over, but the top four teams from each group moved into the winners’ round robin of the eight teams today. The lowest three from each group were scheduled to sail a consolation round today, but the round was postponed after the championship round robin ran late. The top four teams will sail a double final four round robin tomorrow to declare the champion. The status of the consolation round is unknown at this time.

Results

Championship Division
1. Harvard (5 wins - 2 losses)
2. University of Southern California (4-3)
3. Hobart and William Smith (4-3)
4. Tufts University (3-3)
5. St. Mary’s College (3-3)
6. Dartmouth College (3-4)
7. Georgetown University (3-4)
8. University of Hawaii (2-5)

Consolation Division (unranked)
College of Charleston
Texas A & M Galveston
University of Minnesota
University of South Florida
University of Washington
University of Wisconsin

The Team Racing North Americans is the second of three ICSA Spring Championships. ICSA has a web site team on location throughout the regattas to provide updated coverage of the events as they happen. In addition to breaking news, the site features daily wrap-ups, and pictures of the festivities and racing. To catch up on all the latest action, please visit the special 2003 Championships area of the ICSA web site at www.collegesailing.org/2003.

Full results, competitors’ lists and photos are available at the ICSA Web Site.

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