On an extremely windy day on the East River in New York, the Georgetown University sailing team took home the Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association Coed Conference Championship. The win marks the fourth consecutive year Georgetown has earned top marks in the regatta, besting the other top 18 teams in the conference. Senior Katia DaSilva and junior Nevin Snow led the effort for the Hoyas, posting a 21-point A Division lead in another strong performance.

In the B Division, senior Alex Post and junior Bettina Redwar finished in third, and senior Katie Olsen and sophomore A.J. Reiter tallied came in 11th place. These results were enough to earn a victory for the Hoyas. Georgetown’s final score of 61 placed it above the other top-five finishers by an impressive margin of 24 points, easily beating out State University of New York, Maritime, Old Dominion University, the Naval Academy and St. Mary’s College for the conference championship.

While the MAISA regatta marks one of the biggest events of the fall schedule, the team put the win in the perspective of its much larger goals for the season.

“I think that this is important as not only the fall championship, but it also determines your schedule for the next year, so how well you do at this event impacts what events you get into, so it’s really important that we did well,” Head Coach Michael Callahan said. “It doesn’t technically mean anything that we won; these results don’t mean that we’re going to qualify for the national championship, but there are certainly some positives and I think we left the regatta thinking that we didn’t do too well, and that we could have done a lot better.”

Irrespective of the first-place finish, the team expressed the need for constant improvement as the spring season approaches. The issue of consistency — especially in the B Division — is an area of particular importance that the team hopes to remedy in the coming months.

“In B Division, we’re not yet where we need to be for the spring; I would say that we have a lot of work to do there. Consistency is the key-being able to win a race and then getting fifth instead of winning a race and then getting a 17th is the problem we’re having with B Division. There are moments of glory, but there are still moments where we look totally lost,” Callahan said.

Snow agreed with the need for more consistent finishes.

“Just having the consistency to move those low-place finishes up to less destructive spots like eighth or so moving forward will be important,” Snow said.
Snow stressed the importance of maintaining an intense, race-like environment in practice as one way to promote consistency in races.

“Allowing practice to mimic regattas will be important for maintaining that consistency. The closer we can get our practice starts and races to the ones we’ll see in actual regattas, the more comfortable we’ll be,” he said.

Callahan believes that the program is just one step from making a mark on the national level.

“If we can get to be consistent, that’s going to be the difference between winning and losing a national championship,” Callahan said.

The weekend’s victory serves as a litmus test for the development of the team as the season begins to pick up. In a championship environment, both DaSilva and Snow were impressed with the team’s ability to adapt on the fly while maintaining good morale — skills that will be important in the months to come.

“A big part of it for me is having a good morale with the other teammates,” DaSilva said. “It was really windy this weekend so we were prepared for combinations that we’ve never tried out before — in B division [sophomore] A.J. Reiter crewed for [senior] Alex Post, and A.J. had never crewed before.”

Though crewing was a new experience for Reiter, he excelled in the role and allowed the team to finish strong.

Snow was impressed with team’s ability to perform well in high-wind conditions — something that is rarely experienced while practicing on the Potomac.
“It was a really windy weekend, and we don’t have a lot of practice in the breeze here in D.C., so for us to do well in breeze was a huge confidence booster, just knowing that we can still do well in those conditions even though we don’t get to practice in them,” Snow said.

With another MAISA championship now in their back pockets, the Hoyas will make the trip up to New London to continue their quest for a national championship, competing in Coed Atlantic Championships on Nov. 15.

DaSilva summed up the weekend’s performance by expressing appreciation for the victory, but desire for more
“A win’s a win, but we’re always looking to improve,” she said.