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Syracuse’s club sailing team doesn’t have a head coach. It hasn’t since the club was reestablished in 2010 after years of inactivity. Instead, it’s run by the students themselves.

“We are a self-managing club,” freshman sailor Will Waghorne said. “Our leadership is democratically elected, and for races some people will be assigned certain roles.”

After its fall 2022 season where it competed in 10 regattas, the team is preparing for five regattas in the spring. Founded in 1937, the club suffered decline in the years that followed, with minimal members committing. Restarted in 2010, club sailing has been a popular option for student commodores. The team qualified for the 2016 conference championship and placed first in the 2018 Delaware Spring Open.

Collegiate sailing is competitive, with over 200 schools competing in seven regional conferences across the country. Syracuse competes in the Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association against teams like Virginia, Villanova, Penn State and Princeton. Each season, there are five MAISA regattas.

In the fall, Syracuse finished middle of the pack in most races, placing fifth out of eight teams at the Stony Brook Open and fourth at the Battle of Lake Eries. But the club’s biggest triumph came last September, when it sailed out two teams for the Cazenovia Fall Open. Overcoming a shifty northwest breeze, the club had both of its teams finish inside the top five, with Team A placing first and Team B placing fourth.

Bridget Overby | Design Editor

The club practices over the weekend and twice a week at Cazenovia Lake. Once the team arrives, it retrieves boats from the Willow Bank Yacht club, mainly consisting of 420s and FJs. Typically, each practice is catered to each commodore’s skill level with easy practices for some and more challenging ones for other commodores.

“There will usually be different tasks,” freshman Jack Cossari said. “The more beginner levels would sail from Point A to Point B, or learn a new skill. The more advanced it gets, you learn new sailing maneuvers like roll tack and starting formation.”

There are a number of tactics that a sailor must learn to be at their best on the water, Cossari said. First-year students will learn collegiate level dinghy techniques, mainly in small recreational boats. Once completing those, they’ll start to engage in further core requirements meant to bolster a sailor’s experience. This includes raising the main, working the winch, steering and tacking — a maneuver used to change a boat’s direction through oncoming wind. Afterward, the team embarks on its regattas, which will be hosted by different schools each time.

“We host our own regatta in September, and we usually get seven or eight other college sailing teams coming to race,” sophomore commodore Shay Gualdoni said. “The fall is predominantly for most of the competitions and races. We did 10 regattas this fall and we have another five for the spring semester.”

Syracuse mainly competes on the Northeast coast in states such as Delaware, New Jersey, Connecticut and New York. The regattas are spread out weekly to give each team enough time to prepare. As Syracuse has no head coach, students will dedicate positions to someone based on how experienced one is in that particular job.

Syracuse sailing participates in the 2022 Intercollegiate Offshore Regatta hosted by the Larchmont Yacht Club and Storm Trysail Club on Saturday, October 8. The team competed in five regattas in the fall 2022 season, placing with the top five in three of them. Nina Gerzema | Contributing Photographer

Regardless of what position they’re in, everyone needs to have strong communication skills, Waghorne said. Nothing is more important than this when you’re sailing with your crew, he added.

“I’ve had experience where it can be stressful out on the water,” Waghorne said. “Trying to maintain some cohesion can be hard, and we’ll obviously sort things out when we get to shore. Communication is very important.”

Outside of regattas and practices, the team has weekly meetings to recap its events, focusing on what went well during the competitions and what can be improved.

The meetings provide an opportunity for younger members to learn from more experienced members. The club also welcomes any newcomers eager to learn the art of sailing with any level of experience, even those who have never sailed in their lifetime.

“It’s very lenient, you can go to whatever you want to go to,” freshman Alexa Whitman said. “There’s no pressure. Same goes for regattas, it’s very nice that it’s so flexible and it feels like a second family.”

Published on February 20, 2023 at 11:18 pm