The University of Rhode Island club sailing team traveled to Charles River Basin, Mystic Lake and Harpswell Sound last weekend to compete in multiple regattas.
Before attending the regattas, the team earned recognition for their spring season results so far, being ranked 14th in the nation by Sail1Design in open team racing for the first time in program history. This comes as no surprise to third-year skipper Tyler Nash, who is on the open team’s starting lineup.
“We’ve come a long way in the past two years,” Nash said. “We always knew we were right outside the top 10, so I wouldn’t say we are surprised, but it definitely adds more motivation knowing we can beat a lot of the teams in front of us to break [into] the top 10.”
Going into the weekend, URI Head Coach Joakim Karlsen had high hopes and a little extra motivation for his team’s success during the regattas.
“I have a chip on my shoulder now,” Karlsen said. “We have to piece together a couple more things since this weekend is an important one, and then we have our conference championships next week. It’s about being hungry and having the mindset of, ‘we can’t stop,’ that’s not an option. We’re in a good spot and still looking to see if we can improve on that.”
With four regattas on Saturday and one on Sunday, the team had their work cut out for them this weekend.
Starting off on Saturday, the team placed seventh in the Marchiando Trophy-Red Regatta hosted by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and then took 10th in the Vietor Trophy Regatta hosted by Connecticut College. From there, they took third in the Callahan Trophy Regatta hosted by Bowdoin College; finally, they placed seventh in the Jumbo Team Race Regatta hosted by Tufts University.
Going into the regattas this past weekend, a lot of schools overlooked URI as a real competitor, according to Nash.
“What Joakim said about the underdog mentality is really big,” Nash said. “We go to these events, and teams don’t really expect us to be right at the top, so that just makes us even hungrier to show them what we can actually do.”
The team took home second place in the O’Toole Sunday Regatta hosted by Massachusetts Maritime University. However, even with the slow start on Saturday, Karlsen wasn’t surprised.
“It’s a little bit of a validation that we’re progressing in the right direction,” Karlsen said. “We are pretty solid and feeling pretty comfortable across the board as a team, and we know we can beat any team.”
Nash discussed how the program has grown a lot since he arrived two years ago, and he’s expecting great things for the future, attributing a lot of success to work on and off the water.
“Not just as a sailing aspect, but we are also very dedicated to our academics as well,” Nash said. “As we see the results climb, it just gives us more motivation. It’s just about working hard, and the results come after that.”
As the spring season continues, the URI club sailing team looks to crack the top 10 in the national rankings, with the Open Team Race Conference Championships coming up this weekend.
