photo by Sally McCay
FAIR WINDS
UVM sailing competes with nation's best
In some ranks of sailboat racing, advances in boat design are closely guarded secrets, lest the competition glimpse the latest advantage born of innovation. But in collegiate racing, there’s nothing to hide since competitors use a standard fleet provided by the host team. It’s about the sailors, not the boats, which is one reason UVM sailing coach Justin Assad loves the sport at this level.
“We always say that when you go away to a regatta, all the bottoms are scratched, all the sails are blown out, all the hulls have been repaired before,” Assad says. “It really comes down to how much time you’ve put into practicing your boat handling and boat speed, and what kind of focus you bring to the day of the event.”
With skills honed by sixteen hours a week on Lake Champlain, fall and spring, Assad’s UVM sailors have proven themselves against the best programs in the country. In June, the team took eleventh in the Spring National Dinghy Championships, college sailing’s most prestigious event. Leading the way were Clinton Hayes ’10 and Coco Solsvig ’10, who placed second in the A Division behind Brown University. Both earned spots on the 2008 ICSA All-America Team for their efforts.
The slight of not being included in any pre-season rankings helped fuel UVM sailing’s rise last season, Assad says. This year, they’ll build on the motivation of a front-runner; Vermont was ranked sixth nationally in collegiate sailing in August. The entire starting line-up that led the UVM team to its first-ever national championship regatta in June returns this season.
The concept of team as family has been well pounded on the anvil of athletic cliché. But for a club sport (supported by Student Government Association funding and private donations) such as UVM sailing, the notion bears as much truth as sentiment. Assad works part-time to coach a team of nearly fifty, budgets are tight, athletes travel on their own to weekend regattas where accommodations are more likely a teammates parents’ house than a Fairfield Inn. They pull together to make it work.
When Coco Solsvig considers the reasons for UVM’s recent success, she chalks one up to this team emphasis. “Justin stresses that for us to get better, everybody has to be here and working hard. It’s not just the top boats,” she says.
On and off the water, the team is tight. “Every day you can go to the lake with forty of your best friends and play a game that you love,” Assad says. It’s a rare opportunity in competitive sailing, rare in life. “It’s the only time that you’ll have forty people with the same focus, same drive for a sport that is usually pretty individual.”
UVM sailing’s secret weapon might be the broad blue lake at the foot of College Street. “As long as there’s water,” Assad says, the team will venture out to practice for this fall/spring sport. Champlain offers up light winds and heavy, the option of hugging the shore in flat water or speed testing in the open, and character-building cold November days. “When we travel south in the spring,” Assad says, “we don’t get rattled in anything.”
As the team gathers on the Burlington waterfront for one of their first practices of the year in late August, the atmosphere is giddy—upperclassmen reuniting, freshmen getting acquainted, hip-hop playing on someone’s car stereo as the team readies their boats.
The sky is flat and gray, the air sticky, but sailors evaluate weather by their own standards, and there’s a solid breeze, about ten or twelve knots, blowing from the south. Will Strehlow ’09 says to a friend, “Today, other than being kind of ugly, is so sweet.”
The year is off to a promising start.
SHORTS
Catamount student-athletes were awarded the America East Academic Cup in June, marking the fourth consecutive year that UVM has won the award. Vermont student-athletes boasted a 3.14 cumulative grade-point average during the 2007-08 season. A total of thirteen of UVM’s sixteen teams competing in the league earned GPAs of 3.0 or better. The field hockey team posted the best team GPA among all UVM athletics programs at 3.44, while the men’s outdoor track and field squad led all men’s sports with a 3.12 mark.
A four-time NCAA Nordic ski champion, two record-setting track and field standouts, a pair of record-breaking swimmers, a two-time all-conference and all-region baseball player and a trailblazing former basketball coach make up the former Catamount greats inducted into the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame on October 4. This year’s inductees are Matt Audibert ’96 (track and field), Thorodd Bakken ’98 (skiing and cross country), Danielle Lewis ’98 (track and field), Mike Mora ’94 (baseball), Ben Nye ’97 (swimming and diving), Laurie Woelful ’97 (swimming and diving) and Cathy Inglese (women’s basketball coach, 1986-93).
The defending America East champion UVM men’s soccer team was picked to repeat its title by the league’s coaches in the annual pre-season poll. Vermont returns sixteen letter-winners and seven starters from last year’s team that won the program’s fourth America East title and advanced to the second round of the 2007 NCAA Tournament. As VQ went to press, the team’s 2008 record stood at 3-1-2.
Kwame Lloyd begins his debut year as head coach of the Catamount women’s soccer team this fall. Lloyd joins UVM after seven years as head coach at Christopher Newport University in Virginia. Previous coaching posts include his alma mater, Susquehanna University, and Whittier College. As VQ went to press, the soccer squad stood at 1-6-0.
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