Nov. 15, 2006

Santa Barbara, CA - The Stanford Sailing Team's win this weekend at the Co-ed Pacific Coast Championships was the icing on the cake to a fall season in which the Cardinal won every event it entered on the West Coast. The Pacific Coast Fall Championships, also known as the North/South regatta for bringing together teams from all over the West Coast, is always hosted by UC Santa Barbara and was last won by the Stanford team nearly ten years ago. This year, Senior Captains Brian Haines and Joanna Madsen led the team to a close victory over rivals University of Southern California and University of Hawaii.

The racing was spectacular on Saturday, with breeze up to 30 knots allowing for many wipeouts (including some by the Stanford Team) that had the spectators on shore ooh-ing and ahh-ing much of the day. Sunday the weather system cleared to produce a light seabreeze, testing the other end of the competitiors' nerves. Since the North/South regatta is a four-division event, with A and B divisions in two-person FJ's and C and D in one-person lasers, the win was a testament to the team's depth. With Haines and freshman Leigh Hammel sailing A-division, the Cardinal was able to bump up the women's boat of seniors Caroline Young and Madsen into B, allowing the regular Co-ed B-division skipper Emery Wager to compete in lasers C-division, while junior Evan Brown and freshman Peter Stemler split D. Following Wager's win last weekend at the singlehanded Nationals in lasers, he was able to dominate C-division, and earn the needed point spread over close teams to give Stanford an edge on the overall win. The Cardinal D-division was not quite as lucky, with an unfortunate race on Saturday that went from a win on the water to a DNF on land (for failing to sail the correct course), adding 18 points to their score and dropping them from second to sixth overall. In A-division Haines and Hammel kept it close and finished second to previous College Sailor of the Year Mikee Anderson from USC, while Young and Madsen also earned second in B-division, beating both USC and UH. Stanford finished the PCC's with 123 points overall, while USC had 128 and Hawaii earned 138. The team's win in the last event in the dinghy sailing season is a justification of all their hard work this fall, and puts them in prime contention for the National Championships at the end of the spring.

This week the Cardinal sailors practice in J-105 keelboats, preparing for their match-up against Cal in Big Sail November 28 in San Francisco.