Freshman skipper Christine Burke came to Georgetown as the Hoyas’ top women’s sailing recruit this year, and she proved to be as impressive as advertised last weekend.

Burke and freshman crew Caila Johnson won the B Division and junior skipper Blaire Herron and senior crew Emily Siguler dominated the competition in the A Division to lead Georgetown to a first-place finish out of 11 teams at the MAISA Women’s Fall Championship. Cornell University played host to the regatta.

St. Mary’s, ranked No. 1 in the country in the latest Sailing World College Rankings, came in second, 17 points behind No. 4 Georgetown. No. 5 Navy finished 36 points behind the Hoyas to place third.

“If we’re not the top team in women’s sailing right now, we’re certainly very near the top,” Head Coach Mike Callahan (SFS ’97) said. “If we have our top teams sailing, we have a good chance of beating everybody.”

In the A Division, Herron and Siguler consistently finished near the front of the pack. The pair placed among the top three teams in all 11 races, winning five of them. On Sunday, Herron and Siguler won four of their five races. Georgetown finished with 21 points in the A Division, 11 points ahead of second-place St. Mary’s and 19 points in front of third-place Navy.

“On the second day, Blaire [Herron] and Emily [Siguler] were just so much better than everyone else,” Callahan said. “It was pretty amazing to watch. If they were behind, they found a way to pull ahead in the final stretch. They were just incredible.”

Callahan said that Herron’s performance was particularly impressive because she was competing against skippers from St. ary’s and Navy who were named all-Americans last spring.

After finishing sixth in their first race in the B division, Burke and Johnson won six of their final 10 races. The duo finished with 28 points, six points ahead of second-place St. ary’s.

“[Burke and Johnson] had a rough first race,” Callahan said. “But when they were winning races, they were winning by a lot. They were finishing way ahead of competition, which is a very promising sign.”

The top five teams qualified for the Women’s Atlantic Coast Championship, which will be held in Kings Points, N.Y. next weekend. Hobart/William Smith and Fordham notched the final qualifying spots, though they finished well behind Georgetown and St. Mary’s. The Hoyas had 49 total points compared to Hobart/William Smith’s 96 and Fordham’s 121.

The Georgetown coed squad, coming off of a first-place finish out of 20 teams at the War Memorial Regatta on Oct. 29, will also compete this weekend. The Hoyas will look to continue their recent success at the North/South Intersectional, held by UC Irvine, and the Coed Atlantic Coast Championship, held by Brown University. The upcoming weekend’s events will wrap up Georgetown’s fall campaign.

“We’d like to finish the season strong,” Callahan said.