Article: Sailing Finishes Season at ICSA Open Fleet Racing National Championships

Read the article on The Harvard Crimson here

After defending its ICSA Open Team Racing National Championship last month, the Harvard Sailing team looked to close its season with a title in the ICSA Open Fleet Racing National Championship in St. Petersburg, Fla., this weekend. Despite a first-place finish in its semifinal on Tuesday and Wednesday, the team came up short in the final, finishing in seventh.

The semifinal round proved eventful in every respect except the scoresheet. Incoming storms made the wind too extreme for the races to continue on Tuesday, leading to a delay and, ultimately, a suspension of racing after four A-division races and two B-division races in Harvard’s Eastern Semifinal.

“We were very well prepared for the weather conditions,” said head coach Michael O’Connor. “I think our team handled it as well as they could have.”

Despite the choppy water, the Crimson boats made it look like smooth sailing as the team never dropped from first place after the second race of the day, and finished in the top four in 11 of the 14 races. Harvard continued its domination on Wednesday to easily claim first place in the abbreviated Eastern Semifinal with 52 points, while a familiar Ivy League foe, Brown, claimed the fully contested Western Semifinal with 163 points.

Unfortunately for the Crimson, Thursday and Friday’s National Championship brought a mixed bag of performances, resulting in a middling seventh-place finish in the 18-team field.

Through the first 10 races, Harvard sat in third place and was only seven points behind the leading Navy Midshipmen.

However, the Crimson hit a rough patch over the next eight races, including four double-digit finishes and a disqualification with only one top-five finish mixed in. The skid dropped the team from third to tenth with only 10 races left.

Harvard righted the ship from there, finishing in the top ten in every remaining race to climb back up the leaderboard. Finishing with 230 points left the Crimson tied with Georgetown, and the tiebreaker rules favored Harvard, leading to a seventh-place finish.

“We got back to approaching races the way that we normally do,” explained O’Connor.

Sailing can be an unpredictable sport due to the extreme impact of weather conditions on each race’s outcome.

“Some of those races where we struggled, we made some pretty good decisions that just didn’t go our way. It seemed like, if we went to the left side of the course, the right side ended up with a better shift or breeze,” O’Connor added.

The ICSA Open Fleet Racing National Championship marked the final races in Crimson for the distinguished senior class, spearheaded by Justin Callahan, The Crimson’s Male Athlete of the Year. The class led Harvard to back-to-back ICSA Open Team Racing National Championships as well as a 2025 ICSA Match Race National Championship.

“They have been remarkable players throughout their entire careers, and their approach to the sport, their energy, effort, intensity, and their sportsmanship have been exemplary,” said O’Connor. “I couldn’t be more proud of them.”