College of Charleston
Graham Hall Team Race
Cougars Win Graham Hall Team Race
3/23/2015 10:27:00 PM | Sailing
ANNAPOLIS, Md. – The College of Charleston beat out 15 other top team-race fleets in the nation to win the Graham Hall Team Race regatta hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy over the weekend at the Robert Crown Center.
Sunny skies and 12 knots of breeze on the Severn River set-up the perfect scene for the Cougars to finish Round 2 with an impressive 16-2 record on Sunday. The team dominated the race course on each day of the competition, never falling below the top spot.
Leading the way for CofC were skippers Dodge Rees (Pensacola, Fla.), Ryan Davidson (Newport Beach, Calif.) and Jake Reynolds (San Diego, Calif.) as well as crews Tierney Driscoll (Bayport, N.Y.), Emily Stuart (Newport, R.I.), Beka Schiff (Tampa, Fla.) and Ali Blumenthal (Bellport, N.Y.).
It was the Cougars' second Graham Hall Team Race win in three years topping second-place Boston College (15-3), third-place Stanford (13-5), fourth-place St. Mary's College of Maryland (13-5) and fifth-place Georgetown (13-5) to round out the 16-team field. They previously won the event in 2013 and finished fourth in 2014.
The CofC women's sailing team also competed over the weekend and placed third overall at the St. Mary's Women's regatta hosted by St. Mary's College of Maryland in St. Mary's, Md.
The regatta kicked off with very pleasant weather conditions on the first official day of spring as the Cougars were able to quickly climb to the Top 3 in the team standings. After a total of 22 races against some of the finest female collegiate sailors in the country, they were able to maintain their podium spot throughout the weekend.
The Cougars were represented in the 18-team regatta field by senior skipper Clerc Cooper (New Orleans, La.) and sophomore crew Chloe Dapp (Newport Beach, Calif.) and junior crew Charlotte Saxe (Wilton, Conn.) in A-Division (98 points) as well as freshman skipper Elizabeth Pemberton (Osterville, Mass.) with senior crew Morgan Buckley (Yonkers, N.Y.) and junior crew Michaela Reynolds (Providence, R.I.) in B-Division (74 points).
Bowdoin College won the women's event with a combined two-division score of 147 points followed by Yale in second (156 points) and CofC in third (172 points).
CofC will sail in one event this coming weekend at the Szambecki Team Race hosted by Old Dominion on March 28-29 in Norfolk, Va.
Players Mentioned
