To really keep this young pool of talent on their game, the ICSA has modified their format for teams to qualify for the National Championships. For all those college basketball fans who invest countless hours in making their picks for March Madness, we can now add College Sailing picks to the yearly agenda. This is an excellent sign of how far college sailing has come. The number of potential qualifiers has grown such to create individual conferences, according to an April report from ICSA, there are currently seven.
With there being 200 sailing teams in North America, performance in their respective conference was goal number one. From there they were granted the opportunity to participate in two semifinal events that were held the weekend of April 26-27 (Eastern: Hobart and William Smith College; Western: Univ, of Southern California). Each event hosted 18 teams and only the top 9 finishing teams will proceed on to the ICSA/Gill Coed National Championship, hosted June 2-4 by New York Yacht , Brown University and Salve Regina University.
There are two additional events preceding the National Championship for these young sailors to shine: Women's National Championship held May 26-28 and APS Team Race National Championship May 30th thru June 1st. There is, without joke, no time for the weary and one has to wonder how these young minds managed end of semester finals! Lets not forget about the coaches. The fearless leaders who manage all the logistics to ensure their teams performance, health and well-being. The secret ingredients which is unique to each team and the potential difference to making it, or not.
The ISCA website has all the information necessary to follow team favorites and envision the collective events in Newport a venue not to be missed. Teams to watch:
- Georgetown
- USC
- Texas A&M
- Boston College
- U. Wisconsin
- U. Washington
- Eckerd
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