Boston College, Sage Hill HS lead Rose Bowl Regatta

by Rich Roberts on 4 Jan 2009 That sound heard around Alamitos Bay Saturday was a possible restructuring of the sailing power base for colleges nationally and high schools in California.

Boston College's sailing team, never far from the top collegiate rankings, lost last year's event on a protest and returned to lead the 24th annual Rose Bowl Regatta after the first day of competition, but by only one point over the College of Charleston and two over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

St. Mary's of Maryland, victorious the last two years, was 10 points farther back in fourth, just three ahead of upstart UC Irvine.

The college fleets are split into A and B boats, and the hottest A boat was Georgetown's Charlie Buckingham of Newport Beach and crew Ashley Phillips. They logged a string of 7-6-3-1 finishes for 17 points---a good day but not as good as that enjoyed by Bryan Rigby and crew Erin Markee, who finished 1-1-3-1 on College of Charleston's B boat that lifted the South Carolina team into contention.

Meantime, Sage Hill of nearby Costa Mesa broke through the usual high school showdown between Point Loma of San Diego and Newport Harbor, holding an impressive 17-point lead over the former and 18 over Newport Harbor and Santa Barbara High School.

Kevin Laube and Shone Bowman, sailing Point Loma's B boat, kept their team afloat by winning all four of their races.

The event is the country's largest combined collegiate and high school regatta with more than 300 of the nation's best young sailors competing for 24 college entries from the East Coast to Hawaii and 52 high schools from throughout the state, some with multiple teams. All are sailing two-person CFJ dinghies with male, female and coed crews competing equally.

Saturday they were faced with tricky conditions of light, shifty winds of 3 to 6 knots, out of which principal race officer Mike Segerblom squeezed four rounds of racing---one more than was required to qualify the event as official.

'We didn't get a lot of breeze,' Segerblom said, 'but the quality of racing was all right.'

And everyone displayed reasonably good manners; there were only two protests.

Some of the sailors returned to shore shivering in their wetsuits from the lower than normal air temperatures in the mid-50s. Haley Kirk, a 16-year-old local resident sailing for Wilson High, said, 'This weather's not normal for Southern California.'

Sage Hill had finished second in two previous events at two other major events this year while Point Loma and Newport Harbor swapped firsts and thirds.

Coach Zach Maxam, a veteran Olympic campaigner in the 49er class, said, 'I told the kids, 'I'm tired of getting second.' We haven't made any major mistakes yet.'

His team was led by senior skippers Mac Mace (2-1-7-1) and Michael Ramming (4-8-2-3), with Katie Lin and brother Steve Lin as crew, respectively.

'We definitely have stepped up the game,' Maxam said.

The event is hosted by the USC sailing team, organized by the US Sailing Center of Long Beach and based at ABYC. Racing is on the inside bay starting at 11 a.m., conditions permitting.

Complete results, photo gallery and more click here
[Sorry, this content could not be displayed]
United States Sailing Center
www.ussclb.org
www.uscsailing.org
www.abyc.org