Harvard Snaps 33-Year Drought

For the Harvard women’s sailing team, the national championship was 33 years in the making.

The Crimson won the ICSA/Vanguard women’s dinghy championship Friday, bringing the national title—Harvard’s fifth—back to Cambridge for the first time since 1972.

After finishing second last year and eighth in 2003, the Crimson would wait no longer.

“We had higher expectations,” junior captain Sloan Devlin said. “All year we knew we could do it. It was just a matter of putting scores together.”

The Crimson finished with a total of 160 points, putting it comfortably ahead of runners-up the College of Charleston, which finished with 182.

Harvard stayed in position through the first day of sailing, which it ended just behind the College of Charleston, but on Thursday, the Crimson made its move. Harvard’s A-division, skippered by senior Genny Tulloch with sophomore Emily Simon at crew, blew by the competition—including Old Dominion’s Anna Tunnicliffe, the most dominant figure in women’s college sailing—for first.

“We were going out trying not to worry about anybody else, trying to finish as best we could,” Devlin said.

The Crimson sailed conservatively in Friday’s final set, preserving the championship but dropping both boats into second place in their respective divisions.

Between the A-division and the B-division, which was skippered by Devlin with sophomore Christina Dahlman at crew, Harvard totaled six race wins.

The foundation of the championship win, however, was consistency, as neither division finished out of the top five more than four times in 14 races.

And the Crimson’s New England competition? Left in Harvard’s wake.

Dartmouth finished sixth with 209 points and Yale totaled 215 points for eighth place.

Storms on Lake Travis, outside Austin, Tex., dealt racers choppy waters and strong—but, to the Crimson’s advantage, shifty—breezes.

Yet regardless of the compass direction in which the wind was gusting, it ultimately blew Harvard’s way.

“The breezes were shifty, and that’s one of our strengths,” Devlin said before rephrasing more accurately, “We don’t really have a weak condition.”

The national championship was a fitting end—and, perhaps, the only appropriate end—to a season that began with the squad nearly untouched by graduation, built through sometimes-dominant, sometimes-disappointing intersectional regatta finishes, and hit fever pitch with victory in the New England championships.

Individual honors soon followed, as within two days Tulloch and Devlin were each named to the Ronstan All America team.

The co-ed squad sails through tomorrow in the team race national championships before, with little turnaround, sailing Wednesday through Friday in the fleet-racing dinghy championships.

—Staff writer Samuel C. Scott can be reached at sscott@fas.harvard.edu.