June 1, 2007 - Sailing

St. Mary's Finishes Sixth at Coed Nationals

Annapolis, MD - It was a nail-biter of a finale as the 2007 ICSA/Gill Coed National Championship was decided today at the US Naval Academy after sailors from 18 colleges wrapped up three days of competition on the Severn River on Friday. Eight races - four each in A- and B-Divisions - were all that were left to be sailed before the winning team would be crowned. With 168 points (A division=61; B division=107), the College of Charleston Cougars (Charleston, S.C.) were leading the standings after the first-two days of racing, and, as defending champions, were in position to repeat history. Following in hot pursuit were two teams hoping to make the Cougars an endangered species - Dartmouth College (Hanover, N.H.), second with 172 points (A division=102; B division=70), and day one leader UC-Irvine who was third with 184 points (A division=92; B division=92). After claiming two of three championships in the triple crown of sailing, St. Mary's College of Maryland finished sixth in the coed nationals with 269 points (A division = 146; B division = 123).

But while the B-Division teams of Dartmouth and fourth-placed Yale University (New Haven, CT) were able to bring plenty of pressure to bear, it would appear that the stars were perfectly aligned for Charleston. Their senior skipper Russ O'Reilly (Charleston, S.C.) and junior crew Megan Riddle (Vermillion, Ohio) racked up finishes of 2-9-1-2 over today's four final races to win A-Division on 75 points for the series - a whopping 36-point margin over Hobart & William Smith Colleges (Geneva, N.Y.) with 111 points. [O'Reilly and Riddle won B-Division at this championship last year, which was the deciding factor in Charleston winning the 2006 title]. This year, the Cougars' B-Division team of senior skipper Brendan Healy (Arnold, MD) and sophomore crew Britney Haas (San Diego, CA) had a rougher go of it, posting double-digit finishes in three of their final four races. Still, their total 150 points in B-Division was enough for the Cougars to win with 225 combined points - nine points over Dartmouth who ended with 234 (A division=133; B division=101).

The College of Charleston becomes the first school in 12 years [since Navy in 93/94/95] to win this championship in back-to-back years. "I'm really proud of the whole team," said Ward Cromwell, College of Charleston's head coach. "Russ and Megan sailed the pinnacle event of their college sailing career, and Brendan and Britney kept us in it despite some bad breaks [a jib sheet wrapped around the on-board camera] and a few jitters - doing just what we needed to beat Dartmouth." That on-board camera caught more than just the jib line, the action it caught in race 18-B was the deciding factor in a protest brought by Dartmouth. The ruling went in favor of Charleston after the film footage was reviewed by the judges. Dartmouth's senior skipper Andrew Loe (New Orleans, La.) and junior crew Betsy Bryant (Tampa, FL) - won one of their races today and were disqualified from the last race of the series after the protest - to finish second overall in B-Division with 101 points. Seniors Erick Storck (Huntington, NY) and Killarney Loufek (Costa Mesa, CA), were fifth in A-Division at 133 points, for a combined 234 points and second place overall.

Rounding out the top five standings: Yale, 237 points (A division=161; B division=76) for third place; UC-Irvine, 237 (A-Division 126; B-Division 111) for fourth; and Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA), 252 points (A-Division=121; B-Division=131) for fifth. Complete results are available at: http://www.collegesailing.org/nas/spring07/results.asp?RegattaID=204

The Details: The ICSA National Championships sponsored by PENTAX Imaging Company and Vanguard Sailboats brings together sailors representing seven North American conferences. In the Coed event, each of the 18 schools fields a separate A and B division team. Weather permitting, each division sails eighteen 20- to 30-minute fleet races over three days for a total of 36 races. A team's final score is determined by the combined results of its sailors in A- and B-divisions. Conference eliminations qualified 16 colleges for the coed championship, with an additional two teams selected at-large. The teams that qualified to compete in the 2007 ICSA/Gill Coed National Championship hosted by US Naval Academy were as follows: Boston College College of Charleston Dartmouth College Georgetown University (Washington, DC) Harvard University (Cambridge, MA) Hobart & William Smith Colleges St. Mary's College of Maryland Stanford University (Palo Alto, CA) Texas A & M Galveston (Galveston, TX) University of Notre Dame (Notre Dame, IN) University of South Florida (St. Petersburg, FL) University of South Alabama (Mobile, AL) University of Washington (Seattle, WA) University of Wisconsin (Madison, WI) U.S. Naval Academy Yale University Brown University (Providence, RI) [at-large]University of California-Irvine (at-large)