CHARLESTON, S.C. - The top-ranked College of Charleston coed sailing team placed second at the 2011 Adam Szambecki Team Race hosted by Old Dominion on the Elizabeth River in Norfolk, Va.
The Cougars advanced to Sunday's Final Four with two first-place finishes in the first and second rounds held on Saturday against a tough eight-team intersectional field comprised of No. 3-ranked Georgetown, No. 4 Roger Williams, No. 5 St. Mary's College of Maryland, No. 6 Navy, No. 7 Yale, No. 11 Stanford and No. 13 ODU in Sailing World's recent college rankings.
CofC went 2-0 against St. Mary's in the semifinals, but fell 2-1 to Georgetown in the three-race finals. The Cougars were led by skippers Jackson Benvenutti (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.), Mac Mace (Newport Beach, Calif.) and Zeke Horowitz (Sarasota, Fla.) and crews Perry Emsiek (Corona del Mar, Calif.), Alyssa Aitken (Sandwich, Mass.), Cory DeCollibus (Duxbury, Mass.), Sam Stokes (Norfolk, Va.) and Brooks Clark (Newport Beach, Calif.).
Meanwhile, the CofC women placed sixth at the third annual Duplin Women's Team Race hosted by Tufts University on Upper Mystic Lake in Medford, Mass. The Cougars compiled a pair of 2-4 records with first-round race wins over Brown and MIT and second-round wins over Harvard and MIT. They later sailed in a single round-robin on Sunday with victories against Harvard, Tufts and MIT (3-3).
CofC finished the race with a 9-12 overall record behind first-place Boston College (16-6), second-place Tufts (16-6), third-place Brown (13-9), fourth-place Harvard (10-11), fifth-place South Florida (9-12) and ahead of seventh-place MIT (2-19). The Cougars were represented by skippers Corey Hall (St. Petersburg, Fla.), Grace Lucas (Little Silver, N.J.) and Carly Shevitz (Santa Barbara, Calif.) along with crews Laura Beigel (Severna Park, Md.), Sarah Scudder (Mamaroneck, N.Y.) and Jenny Powell (Blue Hill, Maine).
The Cougars will take the first week of April off from competition, but will return to action at the home-hosted SAISA Spring Coed Championships to be held on April 9-10 at the J. Stewart Walker Sailing Center located at Patriots Point in Mt. Pleasant, S.C., as well as the Friss/Marchiando Team Race hosted by Tufts and MIT in Boston, Mass.
