Four Georgetown women held their own against some of the best coed squads in the country at last weekend’s Rose Bowl Regatta in Long Beach, Calif. The Hoyas finished ninth out of 29 teams – a solid performance in a field with nine other squads ranked in the top 20 in the latest Sailing World College Rankings.

Georgetown placed ninth in the A division behind junior skipper Blaire Herron and sophomore crew Carly Chamberlain. In the B division, freshmen skipper Christine Burke and crew Caila Johnson led the Hoyas to an eleventh-place finish.

“Blaire and Carly sailed really well,” Head Coach ike Callahan said. “A lot of people in the A division were coed All-Americans. Christine and Caila , both freshmen, did a nice job as well. They beat some good teams.”

St. Mary’s College won the A and B divisions to place first overall with 31 points, 24 points ahead of second-place Southern California. Georgetown finished with 129 points.

The event wrapped up the fall portion of the Hoyas’ schedule. Although the team lost standout Andrew Campbell (SFS ’06), who won the 2006 Everett B. Morris Sailor of the Year Trophy last spring, Georgetown ended the fall season highly ranked in both the coed division and the women’s division. The Hoya coed squad concluded the season ranked third in the country, while the Georgetown women’s team finished at No. 6.

Callahan called the fall season a success, but said that his team still has a lot of work to do to accomplish its goal of qualifying for the spring’s three national championships.

“Where we stand right now, our best chance lies with our women’s team qualifying. Our coed team is the number one ranked team in our conference,” Callahan said. “Compared to everyone else, we had a good fall season, but everything is so close that there is no guarantee that we will qualify for the coed national championship.”

Although Georgetown won the team racing national championship last spring, the championship may challenge the team this year.

“Team racing could be the biggest problem for us because we lost our two starting skippers from last year,” Callahan said.

The Hoyas will return to the Potomac for practice during the last week of January. They will perfect their team racing skills until the middle of March, when they will shift their focus back to fleet racing.

Georgetown begins the spring season Feb. 10-11 at the Old Dominion Triad and the Charleston Women’s Intersectional.