Harvard Sailing Faces Fierce Competition at Open ACC Championship, Finds Promise in Young Team at Norman Reid

Just one week after Harvard women’s sailing captured its first Atlantic Coast Championship in program history, the Crimson returned to the water for another weekend of competition, this time facing tougher results. Harvard finished 11th at the Open Atlantic Coast Championship and fourth at the Norman Reid Team Race, a weekend that tested the team’s depth while giving younger sailors opportunities to gain collegiate experience.

At the Open ACC Championship, hosted by Brown University, the Crimson finished with 213 points against a field of 17 other schools. Yale claimed the championship title with its 107 points, followed by Boston College with 113 and Brown with 116.

Harvard’s sailors faced challenging conditions from the beginning. Light winds delayed Saturday’s racing until the afternoon, when a developing southerly breeze finally allowed competition to begin. Although the shortened schedule demanded adjustments, the Crimson entered the regatta prepared for the possibility of limited racing.

“We thought we had a good plan for those conditions, but I was very pleased that we kept working at it and got better throughout the event,” head coach Michael O’Connor said.

Harvard’s struggles were particularly evident in the A Division, where it accumulated 133 points compared to its 80 in the B Division. The disparity demonstrated the high intensity of the competition, as many programs played their strongest sailors in the A Division.

“A Division is harder,” O’Connor explained. “Most teams put their best players in A Division, and the margin for error there is razor thin.”

Small mistakes proved costly against a group of the nation’s strongest collegiate sailing programs. Still, O’Connor remained confident that the Crimson possesses the talent to compete at a higher level.

“I think we have the personnel when we get everybody playing as well as they can where we can compete with those teams,” he said.

Despite the disappointing overall result, the weekend also provided encouraging signs. O’Connor highlighted the performance of senior JJ Drummond and sophomore Jacob Posner, who sailed together on Sunday and demonstrated improvement as the regatta progressed.

The Crimson’s second competition of the weekend offered a different challenge. At the Norman Reid Team Race, hosted by Boston College, Harvard finished fourth among six teams with a 4-6 record. Tufts led the competition at 9-1, followed by Roger Williams at 7-3, and Brown at 6-4.

The Crimson entered the regatta with a relatively inexperienced lineup, as four of its six sailors were freshmen. For many of the competitors, the event marked their first opportunity to sail together in a team racing environment.

Although the young squad faced some communication challenges, its ability to compete against more experienced teams was an encouraging sign of its potential.

“We sent a fairly inexperienced team again,” O’Connor said. “They approached it properly, and they lost to some good teams, and they beat a couple of good teams.”

Perhaps Harvard’s most impressive moment came in its final race, when it beat the previously undefeated Tufts. The Jumbos entered the matchup with a perfect 9-0 record, but the Crimson handed them their only regatta loss.

“We were the only team that beat them, so we went away feeling good from that one,” O’Connor said.

Competing against experienced opponents gave the team a chance to identify areas for improvement, particularly in communication, positioning, and recognizing tactical situations.

O’Connor noted that the sailors left the competition encouraged by their ability to remain competitive while gaining a clearer understanding of the skills they needed to develop.

Those lessons extended beyond the Norman Reid Team Race. Across both regattas, O’Connor identified decision-making in crowded racing situations as a key area for improvement. Even when Harvard established a favorable position early in a race, a single tactical mistake could prove difficult to overcome.

“There are times when we’re in a decent position early in the race, and we make one decision in terms of positioning, and we can never recover from it,” O’Connor said. “So we need to make better decisions initially.”

While Harvard’s women’s team has established itself among the nation’s top schools with its ACC Championship title, its open team continues to work toward greater consistency.

“We have room to grow everywhere,” O’Connor said. “You’re never really as good as they tell you you are, and you’re never as bad as they tell you you are.”

As Harvard looks ahead to its final stretch of fall racing, it will strive to build on what it learned this past weekend.

“Our women’s team is capable of winning a national championship,” O’Connor said. And our open team, a lot of people think, is not capable of that at this point. But I think by the end of the year, we are going to surprise some people.”

–Staff writer Tamar H. Scheinfeld can be reached at [email protected].