Impressive Weekend Earns Harvard Nationals Spot

It’s the kind of story everybody loves. The Harvard sailing team went into last weekend’s New England Team Race Championship as the underdog—and emerged with a bid to nationals.

“We had a pretty disappointing team racing season headed into this,” junior captain Jon Garrity said. “We’d never even made the gold fleet, so we weren’t exactly sure where we’d fit in.”

But everything came together at the right time for the Crimson’s co-ed squad, as the team rebounded from a slow start in Providence on Saturday to finish in a three-way tie for first at the close of the first day of competition.

And it all turned around when Harvard upset the favored Yale team, giving the squad the confidence it needed to succeed in the remainder of the weekend’s races.

“The turning moment was when we beat Yale, a pretty good team, on Saturday,” senior Elyse Dolbec said. “We won the rest of our races [on Saturday] and found ourselves in a qualifying position and thought, ‘Hey, we can do this.’”

The Crimson advanced to the final six for the first time this season and held a 2-2 record in the final round going into the last race of the regatta, tied for third place with Tufts.

Harvard and the Jumbos went head-to-head in the final race with a spot at nationals on the line.

“It came down to the absolute last race with Tufts,” Dolbec said. “We had to beat them to qualify. It was really intense. We ended up losing the 1, but finished 2-3-5 on the water.”

That was good enough to beat the Jumbos, despite a scare when the crews got back on the dock.

Tufts filed a protest against the Crimson, but it was disallowed, giving Harvard sole possession of third place and a ticket to nationals, which will be held from May 30-June 1 in Newport, R.I.

Boston College and host Brown will join the Crimson at nationals.

Harvard fielded three boats at the regatta. The team’s pairs were senior skipper Kyle Kovacs and crew Dolbec, skipper Garrity and junior crew Kerry Anne Bradford, and freshman skipper Alan Palmer and junior crew Lauren Brants.

The secret to the Crimson’s success? Despite their youth and relative inexperience, the team kept a level head even in intense competition.

“I think one thing the team as a whole did a good job of is learning and improving during the regatta,” Garrity said. “We came a long way even from where we were on Friday during practice to where we were on Sunday. We didn’t lose races to teams we were supposed to beat.”

“Our younger sailors, Jon and Alan and their crews, just really stepped up,” Dolbec added. “It was their first big team racing event and they did a great job. Kyle and I were really impressed.”

And the icing on the cake was the Crimson’s three collective victories over the Bulldogs, a team that was expected to qualify but wound up with a fifth-place finish.

At the close of the regatta, Harvard’s two seniors were recognized for their performance over the season.

Dolbec was named All-New England as a crew, and was also recognized as one of four finalists for the honor of top crew in New England.

“It’s really nice to have that recognition,” Dolbec said. “It’s nice to know all the hard work has paid off.”

Kovacs took home quite a bit of hardware from the event.

“Kyle was not only All-New England, but he also won the senior trophy, which is basically a combination of sportsmanship and talent,” Garrity explained. “And even greater than that, he was the New England sailor of the year. We’re all pretty psyched about that.”

Dolbec, who has crewed for Kovacs since their freshman year, has only good things to say about her boatmate.

“I’m really proud of him,” Dolbec said. “I’ve learned so much from Kyle. I never thought I could be a crew. I grew up as a skipper, always making all the decisions. But sailing with him, I feel very involved in the boat. I really feel like we’re a team.”

The Crimson is now looking ahead to nationals, both for team racing in addition to the coed dinghy national championship. The dinghy championship will be held in Newport as well from June 2-4.

And if there’s anything Harvard has learned this weekend, it’s that nobody can be counted out.

“Sure, Boston College has proved themselves as the dominant team, but nobody’s infallible,” Dolbec said. “People might not underestimate us as much as they did this weekend, but if you put your mind to it, anything’s possible.”

—Staff writer Kate Leist can be reached at kleist@fas.harvard.edu.