Monday, May 31, 2010

Jesse wins Team Race College Nationals!

Jesse bookended his collegiate sailing career with another Team Race Title in Madison, Wisconsin today. Jesse had previously won Team Race Nationals his freshmen year at the Naval Academy in Annapolis, MD. St. Marys has now won this Championship 5 times and is a testament to the program's status as one of the perennial powerhouses in college sailing. Jesse and the St Mary's team have been working hard all year for this event and are excited that they executed on this lofty goal.

While aspects of team racing are not highly correlated to 49er sailing, many of the same principles remain: good coaching, staying calm under pressure, seamless teamwork, effective goal management, hard work, good boat handling, and managing the ups and downs of the championship. Winning championships is not easy to do and the more practice the better! Jesse has now won three collegiate national titles - 2 Team Race Titles (2007, 2010) and the Dinghy Championship (2009). This extremely successful collegiate career is a great foundation for international sailing as it has made Jesse tactically sharp, a confident starter and very knowledgeable in the rules department.

Jesse's last collegiate regatta starts tomorrow as St Marys sets out to defend its 2009 Dinghy Championship. He then returns to Bermuda on June 4th and we head out for our first summer in Europe of 49er training/racing on June 10th.

PRESS RELEASE:
ST. MARY'S COLLEGE WINS
2010 ICSA/APS TEAM RACE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP


Madison, Wisc. (May 31, 2010) - Over the three-day Memorial Day holiday
weekend, the top 14 schools in the nation - as determined by their
performance in one of the seven Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association
conferences to which they belong - were in America's Heartland racing for
the 2010 ICSA/APS Team Race National Championship title on Lake Mendota.
And for one team, St. Mary's College (St. Mary's, Md.), it was a reversal of
fortune from 2009 when the Seahawks lost this championship on a tie breaker,
to come back and win this year's contest on a tie break with the same team -
Boston College. Proving that they are a powerhouse in this format of
sailing, the win marks the fifth time the Seahawks have clinched this unique
championship which pits each college's three-boat team against another's in
a round-robin series of matches.

The competition starts with the 14 teams divided into two groups; the first
hurdle for the teams was finishing top four in their group. In Group 1, St.
Mary's (6-0), Tufts (5-1), Yale (4-2) and College of Charleston (4-2) moved
on to the Gold Round. Northwestern University (2-4), Texas A&M Galveston
(1-5) and the University of Hawaii (0-6) were out of contention for the
national title at the conclusion of that round.

>From Group 2, Boston College (6-0), Georgetown University (5-1), the U.S.
Naval Academy (4-2) and the University of Wisconsin (3-3) progressed to the
Gold Round, while Eckerd College (1-5), Stanford University (2-4) and the
University of Washington (0-6) were also out of contention.

At the conclusion of the Gold Round, also known as the "elite eight," the
"final four" race to determine the champion. The goal of the championship
is to have the top four teams meet each other three times, which also allows
for a tie break. This year's event was a light air contest, and credit goes
to the Race Committee for giving the sailors every opportunity to get races
completed especially on the penultimate day of the championship (Sunday, May
30) when competitors were out sailing at 9:00 a.m. and finishing up about
8:00 p.m.

"When teams make the 'elite eight,' each team is capable of beating everyone
else," explained Adam Werblow, Head Varsity Sailing Coach at St. Mary's.
"There is no easy win. Every team has worked damn hard to get here and
they've accomplished a lot by the time they get to the championship round.
That's what makes it fun. There are simply no gimmes once you get into the
elite eight."

"What helped us is that we have a team who has worked together for a very
long time," said Werblow. "This team has been perfecting the skills of team
racing and Bill Ward (Varsity Sailing Coach) has been exceptional on
coaching the details of how to team race well. The level of consistency
that they've had is remarkable. With the support of our alumni we set the
bar really high and we had a goal at the beginning of the year to win this
championship. "

On the water for St. Mary's were senior skipper Ted Hale (Annapolis, Md.)
with junior crew Francis Kupersmith (Alexandria, Va.), junior skipper
Michael Menninger (Newport Harbor, Calif.) with senior crew Kelly Wilbur
(Ipswich, Mass.) and senior skipper Jesse Kirkland (Warwick, Bermuda) with
junior crew Madeline Jackson (Bainbridge Island, Wash.). For the last race
of the championship, senior skipper Mike Kuschner (San Francisco, Calif.)
sailed with Kupersmith, and Hale sailed with Wilbur.

"We have such a proud tradition and we are thrilled to be able to represent
the school and one another," summed up Werblow. "There are 30 kids on our
team and 2,000 in the school. The 10 kids sailing here are representing the
rest and feel really proud to regain the national title we covet so much."

Final standings for the final four: St. Mary's 12-5, Boston College 12-5,
Georgetown 10-7 and Charleston 9-8. Complete results are available at:
http://2010nationals.collegesailing.org/page/Team-Race-Results