Mission Bay Yacht Club served host to 144 of the top Team Racers in the nation, forming 24 solid teams all competing for the USSailing Team Racing National Championship. Out of these 24 teams, SDYC was able to field two extremely competitive teams, Blue and White. My team, White, consisted of fellow SDYC Junior Sailing Alums as well as Point Loma High School alums;
Jack Egan and Aidan Hoogland. We each sailed with our respective crews during our times as junior and collegiate sailors.
Three days of racing separated out the 24 teams through a grueling Swiss League format event. The Swiss League pairs the best against the best, in it’s simplest form. After 18 races, the Swiss League determined the top 8 teams of the regatta to move on into the knockout stages, which both of the SDYC teams made! As the 7th seed, we paired up with the #2 Seeded “Jet Lag” consisting of some Stanford alumnus which proved to be a great pairing as we had raced them three times prior to the knockouts. After three more close races, each coming down to the finish, we were able to beat those Cardinals and move onto the Semi-Finals, matching up against a very youthful, fast, and talented Harvard Team.
The Semi-Finals were and still are a difficult memory as we were knocked out in quick succession but they’ve serve as great learning opportunities for the three of us. Plus, it isn’t the worst thing to get knocked out by the eventual winner’s of the entire competition. Full credit to that Harvard team for being the best team throughout the weekend, deserving winners. While being knocked out is a difficult pill to swallow, we still knew we had a lot to race for in the form of a Bronze Medal, which we were able to do after two high-intensity races with some friends from
the NE.
Of course, this achievement means a lot for our team as we podium’ed a National Championship even though we hadn’t sailed as a three person team prior to the event, showing that our backgrounds in the Jr Program had taught us more than we could have imagined! We are really grateful for the SDYC Competition Fund for helping make this event possible and we look forward to future years where we can hopefully take a step, or two, up the leaderboard and bring the Hinman Trophy to San Diego!