Women's Sailing Places Seventh

In one of its better overall performances of the season, the Radcliffe sailing team came in seventh out of 15 teams at the Atlantic Coast Championship at St. Mary's of Maryland.

Radcliffe finished with the same total score (187) as fifth-place Connecticut College and sixth-place Dartmouth, but lost out on tiebreakers. Radcliffe was also closer to second-place St. Mary's (172) than to eighth-place Charleston (204).

"We definitely had a really strong performance," said junior Cori Ermler. "Even though it's not as important as Nationals, the competition is better."

The ACC draws teams from the New England, Atlantic Coast, Mid-Atlantic and Southern districts, where the nation's top boats generally sail. At Nationals, weaker districts join in, lowering the overall skill level.

Radcliffe would have finished even higher had it not been for an unfortunate disqualification during the final A division race. Senior captain Laura Sterns was deemed by the race judge to have hit another boat at the jibe mark--the second buoy of the triangle-shaped course--even though the team felt that the judge had caught the wrong boat.

"It was kind of sketchy...the judge saw that she was second to last and tried to get the inside position [and hit another boat]," Emler said. "Unfortunately, Laura was last in the race at the time and was nowhere near that."

Therefore, when Stearns' boat caught up to the pack and finished fifth, Radcliffe was stuck with a last-place score of 16 instead of a much nicer score of five. With the extra 11 points, the team would have finished in fourth place, one point back of Navy.

Tufts won the championship with 170 points, geared by a 69 score in its A division. Boston University (217) came in ninth, Boston College (242) tenth, and Princeton (339) 15th.

The Harvard co-ed sailing team was also at the ACC, with this one taking place at Connecticut College. Harvard finished in ninth place out of 16 teams with a score of 236.

Hobart won the title with a score of 143, well ahead of second-place Rhode Island (169). B.C. came in fifth with 206 points, and Dartmouth finished eighth with 221 points.