Women's College Sailor of the Year and Women's All-Americans

by Jennifer Mitchell on 26 May 2013 Quantum Women’s College Sailor of the Year award and ICSA Women’s All-American Team were announced at the final banquet for the Sperry Top-Sider/ICSA Women’s National Championships in St. Petersburg, Fla. at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg.

The Quantum Women’s College Sailor of the Year award annually honors an individual who has performed at the highest level of competition in district and national championships. The ICSA All-America committee evaluates with great detail all of the finalists’ results and calculates the winner. Quantum believes that women sailors should receive the same recognition that male sailors receive in the sport to acknowledge women’s’ excellence in sailing and continue to foster its growth.

Past winners of this award include Olympic Gold Medalist Anna Tunnicliffe (Old Dominion University) a 2013 U.S. Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider member of Team Maclaren and Annie Haeger (Boston College) also a 2013 U.S. Sailing Sperry Top-Sider Team member.

The finalists this year were Mary Hall ’15 (Seminole, Fla.), Deirdre Lambert ’15 (Cumberland, Maine) and Erika Reineke ’16 (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.). All of these women sailors are young and have had an incredible year of competition.

Reineke, who just completed her freshman year, won Women’s Singlehanded Nationals with ease. 'She has been the best women’s B-division skipper this season,' says John Vandemoer, head coach for Stanford University and a member of the ICSA

All-America committee. Reineke is also a member of the 2013 U.S. Sailing Team Sperry Top-Sider in the Laser Radial class.

Lambert and Hall have consistently been strong competitors in women’s A-division this season, with Lambert winning A-division in every event she sailed except for one. This women’s Championship was no exception as she won A-division by 37 points. All three honorees have also competed in coed regattas and been involved in team race events as well.

This year, Lambert’s results spoke for themselves and she has been named the 2013 Quantum Women’s College Sailor of the Year.

'It is really a great honor,' Lambert says of winning the award. 'My success has really been a whole team effort,' she says. Winning the award, however, reminds her that there is still work to do with the team over the next few years.

Lambert started sailing at the age of seven at Portland Yacht Club in Maine. She fell in love with it and has been sailing ever since. Both her sisters and parents are sailors as well. Her older sister, Emily, competed in college sailing and helped peak her interest in sailing at the college level.

Lambert is studying biomedical engineering at Dartmouth and has two more years of studies and college sailing to look forward to.

The guidelines for All-America selection evaluate a competitor based on their competitive record in conference and North American Championships. Beyond that the committee analyzes how this record compares to fellow competitors, the quality of the competition the record was achieved in, the span of the record over the fall and spring seasons, results achieved with different crews, and how the record compares to previous All-American winners in previous years.

It is possible to select fifteen winners between the All-Americans and Honorable Mention All-American skippers, however 13 were honored this year. Below is a list of the honorees.

Honorable Mention All-American Women Skippers (three):

Marlena Fauer ’14, Yale University
Abby Featherstone ’13, University of South Florida
Natalie Salk ’13, Tufts University

All-American Women Skippers (10):

Claire Dennis ’13, Yale University
Nancy Hagood ’14, Georgetown University
Mary Hall ’15, U.S. Naval Academy
Stephanie Hudson ’13, Boston College
Morgan Kiss ’15, Yale University
Deirdre Lambert ’15, Dartmouth College
Kayla McComb ’13, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Erika Reineke ’16, Boston College
Mimi Roller ’13, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
Lauren Turner ’13, Cornell University

Quantum Women’s College Sailor of the Year Finalists:

Mary Hall ’15, U.S. Naval Academy
Deirdre Lambert ’15, Dartmouth College**
Erika Reineke ’16, Boston College

*The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) is the governing authority for sailing competition at colleges and universities throughout the United States and in some parts of Canada. Click here to learn more.