The Polar Bears had strong results in both coed and women's events last weekend, an encouraging performance as the team looks to continue to improve in the coming weeks.
This weekend the coed squad will travel to Rhode Island for the New England Dinghy Championships, hosted by the University of Rhode Island.
The venue is open water on the Atlantic ocean, and the team is looking forward to big breeze and surf. The women continue to prepare for Women's New England Championships, which Bowdoin will host next weekend.
At the Greater New York Dinghy Open, Fordham University, 20 top sailing teams from New England and the Mid-Atlantic gathered to warm up for the divisional coed championships next weekend.
The Polar Bears were led by D.J. Hatch '11 and Mae Speight '13, whose strong sailing in A division landed them in third place, just four points behind the winning team, Dartmouth, and one point behind second place Fordham.
"The wind was very light," said Speight, "so we tried to have great light air boat-handling and just find pressure where we could."
The squad was rounded out by Jimmy Rohman '13 and Madison Rex '14 in B division, and Bowdoin placed seventh of 20 overall, behind only three New England teams. Coach Frank Pizzo was encouraged by this result, and reminded the sailors that they needed to continue to practice hard.
"[We] can earn some very good results at our conference championships but we need to be prepared," he said.
For the third weekend in a row, the women's squad competed at BU, this time in the Women's Presidents Trophy, a highly competitive women's intersectional regatta.
The Bowdoin women placed sixth of 16 teams, buoyed by a strong performance from the newly returned skipper Katie Doble '13 and her crew Isabel Low '13. Doble, in her first regatta of the season since a concussion, sailed to fifth in B division, with consistently good scores including two second-place finishes.
Coco Sprague '11 and Emily McNeil '14 led the women in A division, and posted a third place and an abundance of top-10 results to keep the team in sixth overall.
Further down the river, a younger coed squad sailed at the Longfellow Bridge Invitational. Ben Mende '13 and Andy Zheng '14 placed fourth in B division, with seven top five placements in their 12 races.
In another race, Sarah Fiske '13 and Ayaka Okawa '14 placed eighth in A division of the Admiral Alymer's Trophy at Massachusetts Maritime Academy, with a win in race 8A and two third-place finishes.