College Sailing: A Brief Past, Present, and Future

Prior to 1970 there were many different kinds of boats in college sailing.  Competitors would show up at nationals having never even seen, let alone sailed, the class of boats to be raced.  One year it was Lido 14s and Lehman 12s, both great boats and familiar to SoCal sailors but foreign to Easterners.  Most of the boats then were simple cat rigged dinghies.  In the East, Interclubs were most popular (still used today in many frostbite fleets) while MIT had Tech Dinghies, Coast Guard had Internationals 12, and my alma mater, URI, had Beverly Dinghies.  The I-12s were pretty cool in that they had rotating masts and leeward shrouds that could be partially released for better downwind sail shape but still, there was only one sail.

Along came FJs and 420s.  Yale took the lead with I- 420s but with the pounding they took on the widest fetch of Long Island Sound, they went through three fleets in less than a decade.  So they ordered a beefed up version and the heavy but durable club 420 was born.  Although it took a few more iterations to get the boats nearly indestructible not much has changed since.  Lasers and Radials are always used for singlehanded champs while the intermediate keelboats (and sometimes large centerboarders) still vary from year to year at the Sloop Nationals.  Navy 44s (big sloops, Yawls before 1990) are the boat for the national big boat invitational for the Kennedy Cup.

Coaching increased in 1980 with many new coaches while part-timers became full-time.  The biggest impact has been recruiting but coaches also raise money.  Recruiting has dramatically changed the demographics of college sailing.  The excellent junior talent in the Midwest has been steadily recruited out to the East and to a lesser degree, the West Coast.  In just the past five or ten years another wave of coaches, including many assistant coaches, has continued the recruiting barrage.  Now even the West Coast talent is recruited east.  In 1977, when I sailed nationals for U. Rhode Island, every district had great talent.  Every team at nationals was really good but at regional events, only half the teams were fast.  After all the recruiting there were mostly great teams at nationals but there were always five or six club teams that were good but way off the pace.  Meanwhile eastern intersectionals got deeper, especially the Atlantic Coast champs.

Today the eastern intersectionals are stacked but so are nationals since the semi-finals allow more top teams to qualify.  The level of sailing has gotten even higher since regattas every single weekend are stacked with talent from first to last.  The slightest slip up on the starting line or windward mark and you’re history.  Even the next level of mini-majors and some minor regattas are far more competitive than ever before.  There is also very good club level racing all over the country whether it is among the best of the teams without coaches or second and third string teams with coaches. 

Predicting the future is always fraught with guess work.  Most attempts are a straight line projection of the present but nothing happens in straight lines.  Technological advances are always on an exponential curve while most events, such as the economy and the fortunes of athletic teams, happen in cycles.  When Paul Elvstrom raced at a Yale regatta many years ago he was asked about the future of sailboat racing.  He responded that while the boats and equipment will always evolve, the tactics remain the same.  That makes it easy for college sailing coaches who don’t need to be constantly re-educated like most other professionals.  There are, however, subtle changes in tactics as rules, boats and race courses change but in college sailing, the boats have changed very little in thirty years.

Let’s start our predictions with the (flawed) straight line method.  The boats will continue to be club FJs and club 420s.  Most teams have one or the other.  Some of the bigger programs have eighteen of one and six of the other; a few even have eighteen of both.  Coaching will continue to increase as college sailing becomes even more accepted by budget constrained athletic departments.  More teams will emerge from active but not super talented club teams with part-time coaching to become varsity powerhouses.  In the 90’s Hobart and Georgetown in MAISA did just that.  In the 2000’s it was Roger Williams and Vermont in NEISA, South Florida and Eckerd in SAISA.  Perhaps UConn and Providence College will be next.  In MAISA, look for Cornell to lead the other Mid-Atlantic Ivies into varsity sailing with a full-time coach and a big time program.

Can the Midwest (and SEISA and NWICSA) schools go varsity?  The current model for athletic departments among big state universities (with thankfully lower tuitions) seems to be “Show me the revenue or remain a club team.”  We are a fairly philanthropic society though.  Once an endowment is in place for a coach, the coach builds the snowball with more fundraising and recruiting.  There is no shortage of sailing talent in any states with lots of lakes.  It just needs to be organized and focused

Now let’s bend the bar a little.  The next change in formats will be in our sloop championships.  The USA is under pressure from the rest of the world to do more match racing.  Match racing isn’t quite as fun as team racing but team racing does not translate well outside of English; just like American football.  Match racing requires umpires but we’re getting used to that with team racing and keelboat MR is easier to umpire than dinghy TR.  I like college sloop racing despite being among the many calling for the sloop nationals to become the national sloop invitational.  Variety is fun and sailing can give you variety unlike most other sports.  Sloops also help the heavy guys.  Note: I’m not for making the dinghies bigger to support the bigger sailors since I am a huge fan of introducing our sport to small people who have few other lifetime sports to enjoy.  Also, having a sport that is 50-50 men and women has huge social and educational advantages over single gender sports.

Should there be a new college dinghy?  I’m all for it.  Rather than debating the attributes, I could go on for pages, let’s just dream of some possibilities.  What if we had a simple, affordable, durable college dinghy that requires a bit more athleticism and technical knowledge for coed sailing and delivers a more exhilarating ride than our current boats?  Imagine a small asymmetrical spinnaker for fleet racing while team racing with just main and jib.  One argument against is that it will put our many beginner crews further behind.  Naysayers said exactly that in the early 70’s about adding jibs.

Ken Legler, URI’77, Tufts Sailing Coach since 1980

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