Northeastern club sailing is in a league of its own — literally. This team is the one of two club sports teams at Northeastern that competes against varsity teams in its normal competitive circuit, and this past year, Northeastern club sailing qualified both the women’s and open team nationals.
Club sailing at Northeastern is one of the four oldest sailing teams in the country and has had a partnership with the MIT Sailing Pavilion since its creation in 1939. The team, which started with just a handful of sailors, has been growing and improving ever since and currently has 33 members.
The club, which relies heavily on donations, as all club sports do, has struggled to maintain their time at the MIT sailing pavilion due to rising fees.
Northeastern club sailing hired a full-time coach in 2013, a result of a $750,000 donation allowing them the budget to do so, according to fourth-year civil engineering major Aidan Boni. This gift was the largest of any Northeastern sports team ever. More recently, the same family donated $250,000 to continue to help support the team.
Because the team regularly faces off against varsity teams with higher budgets, fourth-year mechanical engineering major Adrian Winkelman emphasized the need for more funding to continue bettering the program.
“I think that the university could support all club sports more — sailing is kind of in a tough spot,” he said. “[We] compete against varsity teams, and we have really maxed out our potential as a club team.”
Despite difficulty in funding, the Huskies have earned great successes. Both the open and women’s team qualified for nationals in the 2023-24 season, and the women had their highest-ever finish at nationals, ending up 15th in the country.
The team competes weekly, often leaving to travel to regattas either Friday nights or Saturday mornings. Upon arrival, the athletes rig their boats, launch them and get ready to race as many as fourteen races in a day on both Saturday and Sunday. The team is on the water the entire day — leaving as early as 10 a.m. Saturday and coming back as late as 6 p.m. Sunday is an early start, getting into competition mode around 8 a.m. and heading back around 3 p.m.
In the fall semester, most of the regattas are fleet racing and in the spring semester, most are team racing. Team racing in sailing involves two or more teams competing against each other, with the goal of accumulating the fewest points by finishing each of their boats as high in the order of finish as possible. In fleet racing, every boat competes individually.
This past spring, the team attended very few regattas, instead choosing to practice and compete in the few fleet racing regattas in an effort to qualify for nationals. In order to qualify, the national committee chooses the top 36 teams based on six total regattas; Atlantic Coast Championships, the spring and fall championships and the team’s other two best regattas and then selects the top teams from that. This past year, nationals were held on the Charles River in Boston.
In addition to creating a national level team, the Northeastern club sailing team has worked to create a welcoming community for everyone.
“[The team] has always been really stable, like a support system,” said Zoe Grant, a fourth-year biology major and women’s team president.
Fourth-year health science major Lila Coffman, who grew up in Hyannis and has spent her entire life sailing, found the team to be incredibly welcome when she transferred to Northeastern.
“I came here during my sophomore year. And that was really helpful to join the team right away. Some of my best friends are on the team. I spend a lot of time with my teammates, just because we spend a lot of time together practicing,” Kaufman said.
The team is looking forward to a future with more success, both on the community level and at the competitive level.
“Our hope for this season is to make it to nationals again. And I think generally the hope for the future is to just continue to build on the momentum that we have going at the moment,” Boni said. “So continue to do well in regattas, continue to make it to nationals and then use that energy to recruit better, to have better practices with more competitive sailors and just to continue to build.”
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