UC Irvine Club Sailing Team

This past weekend the Anteaters competed in the 2011 ICSA APS Team Race National Championship hosted by the Colombia Gorge Racing Association and the ICSA. The Anteaters were one of two teams to qualify from the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference’s Team Race Championships back in April.

We were placed in the first qualifying group with Georgetown, Yale, Roger Williams, College of Charleston, Northwestern, and Tulane. Most of the team flew into Portland International Airport early Thursday evening. The Lady Anteaters were already in Oregon because in the days leading up to team race nationals they had competed in Women’s Nationals. Alumni and Coach Eric Knopf had also driven his motor-home up from Southern California to help coach both our Women’s and Team Race teams.

Friday was the first day of team racing and the Anteaters faced some tough competition as well as some interesting weather conditions. The conditions were basically the complete opposite of Newport Beach, rainy, windy, and about seven knots of current that was running in the opposite direction of the wind. These conditions made team racing hard for every team in the first few rounds. The first teams we sailed against were, Georgetown, Roger Williams, and Yale. We lost all three rounds which left us in a very bad mood. Coach Eric Knopf managed to raise our spirits and we rallied and went on to beat Northwestern and Tulane. We finished the day sailing against College of Charleston, which ended up being a fairly close race, but in the end we lost. This left us with a 2-4 record and we just missed the cut off for gold fleet, Yale had a 3-3 record and made gold. This put us in the consolation round and meant we only had five more races the following day.

The next day the team came back ready to sail after Coach Knopf inspired us with a very well made speech. The conditions were very different from the day before. The sun had decided to come out and the rain stopped. The wind also became very similar to the bright sunny Newport Beach that the Anteaters were used to. The one condition that stayed consistent was the insane amount of current. We started out the day beating, Tulane and Northwestern, who had also been placed in the consolation round. We then sailed against Oregon who we managed to beat also. The Anteaters next race was against Wisconsin which was a very high tension race because both teams were undefeated up to this point. We ended up taking the loss. Once again Coach Eric Knopf talked to our team and raised our spirits once again. Our final race was against University of South Florida, this was incredibly close and they managed to take the win from us. Although they beat us they did draw a Black Flag from the Judges and an incident went to the room. USF lost the protest that did not affect the final outcome of the race because the USF person that was black flagged was in the six and his teammates had secured the one and two spots. The black flag ended up hurting USF because they had earned an additional black flag that day and the Umpires and Race committee had penalized them by 1.5 wins. This put us second in the consolation round behind Wisconsin. This put us in tenth overall.

This Nationals trip was a great last regatta for seniors, Rex Cameron, Jack Porter, and Blair Johnston. This trip would also not have been possible with the support of our Coach Eric Knopf, who drove his motor home over 1,000 miles so we could use his motor home for the weekend. We would also like to thank UCI Club Sports for supporting us the entire year and to all our Alumni and friends who have donated their time and money to help us. Especially to Eric and Juliana Knopf and Andy Beeckman who came down one weekend and practiced with our team to help us prepare. Our last big thanks is for the Newport Harbor Sailing Foundation who donated to our Nationals Campaign and made our trip possible!