CHARLESTON, S.C. - The second-ranked College of Charleston sailing team edged top-ranked Boston College, 2-1, in the finals of the 2011 Marciando Team Race hosted by MIT on Sunday in Boston, Mass.
The Cougars advanced to the final round with a two-race lead in the eight-team field comprised of seven of the nation's top 20 crews in Sailing World's recent college rankings. They posted an impressive 11-3 record in the Gold race with wins over BC (2-0), Boston University (2-0), No. 7-ranked Brown (2-0), No. 12 Tufts (1-1), No. 8 Yale (1-1), No. 4 Harvard (1-1) and No. 18 Connecticut College (2-0).
Leading CofC to its sixth first-place victory of the spring season were skippers Jackson Benvenutti (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.), Zeke Horowitz (Sarasota, Fla.) and Mac Mace (Newport Beach, Calif.) as well as crews Perry Emsiek (Corona del Mar, Calif.), Alyssa Aitken (Sandwich, Mass.) and Cory DeCollibus (Duxbury, Mass.).
"We sent our top team to Boston and it was great for us to finish the race in the way that we did on Sunday," CofC Head Coach Ward Cromwell said. "It was the last major intersectional race regatta of the season and to beat Boston College one-on-one in the finals was a huge win for us."
The Cougars also placed second with 51 points at the home-hosted SAISA Spring Coed Championships held Saturday on the Cooper River in Charleston Harbor. They were one point shy of the University of Miami (Fla.) who turned in 50 first-place points at the in-district regatta.
Skipper Sam Stokes (Norfolk, Va.) and crews Brooks Clark (Newport Beach, Calif.) and Katharine Baker (Cohasset, Mass.) paced CofC to a third-place finish in the A-Division race with 28 points followed by skipper Erik Bowers (Excelsior, Minn.) and crews Katherine Santa Cruz (Bay Saint Louis, Miss.), Amy Kubie (Norwalk, Conn.) and Sarah Somes (Grosse Pointe Park, Mich.) in the B-Division with 23 points.
As nationals near, CofC will prepare for the postseason with competition over the next two weeks at the Wick/Shrew Women's regatta hosted by the U.S. Coast Guard Academy on April 16-17 in New London, Conn., and the SAISA Team Race Championships hosted by Eckerd College on April 16-17 in St. Petersburg, Fla.
