To comment on the one/two season issue, I would say that there is one season during the school year. While we do have a break during the season, over the winter, we at Washington College treat the entire school year as one long season. If a team is smaller and has less depth than some of the larger teams, treats the year as two seasons would make it more difficult to prepare for all the spring national level events.
Until the day where college sailing separates its disciplines (fleet racing, team racing, singles, sloops), the school year is on long season. More specifically, fleet racing is done the entire year and we, at WAC, sail team racing most in the spring. I am beginning to consider strongly not competing in team racing at all next spring as it makes more sense for a smaller team to use the time in the spring, needed to train for team racing, to train fro fleet racing. If any team truly wants to team race well, they have to practice in the fall and forego many opportunities to fleet race in the spring in order to sail enough team racing during the spring to be competitive. The bottom line is sacrifice. Any small team that wants to sail it all has to sacrifice somewhere to do it. So as a smaller team, on the heels of the larger teams, not having to sail in the North/Central/South events in the spring would allow us to have more of an opportunity to diversify during the spring season. When everyone talks about improvement, I hope they understand that improvement can come from many factors. A team improving from #20 to #15 in MAISA does not need to sail against the top 9 teams to do it. To think otherwise is just foolish. That said, a team who is #12 and might want to move up into the top nine could use the sailing experience against that top nine. The North/Central/South events are not sailing against the top nine. In almost every case, the top nine teams would not send the same sailors to those events as they would sent to a larger event or intersectional. In order for that #12 to get the experience you talk about, they need to sail in larger events than the North/Central/South events. By making the top nine team sail in the North/Central/South events to qualify fro the America trophy, MAISA is basically telling the deeper teams to sail their younger, up in coming sailors, against the weaker teams in a effort to train the weaker teams. Im not sure it is reasonable to ask the larger teams to have to do this as the history tells us those team will ALWAYS QUALIFY for the America Trophy and the only reason to have them sail those events is to train other teams. There is no sport I can think of that requires teams to help train their competition. The top nine from the War should be in the America, simple. I think it should be from the America to the following War too, but I'm not sure that matters as much as there is less schedule stress on fleet racing, due to the team race schedule, as there is in the spring. Geoff Becker MAISA Graduate Driector Head Coach, Varsity Sailing Washington College > Nate: > > There are many minor regattas, which give small club teams the opportunity > to > be competitive and to win. Should qualifying regattas for conference > championships be among them? No. > > I agree with Scott. If prequalified teams are eliminated from the #1 > qualifying regattas, those events will be diluted, which does not serve > the best > interests of teams trying to improve. > > However, I also agree with your last sentence, "Teams sailing in > qualifying > regattas should all be teams trying to qualify, rather than teams that > have > already achieved that goal," which is why I am against the concept of > prequalified teams from one season to the next. In a qualifying regatta, > all teams should > be attempting to qualify. Following this logic, a case can be made for > only > teams from the same region being allowed to compete, and teams qualifying > at #1 > events not being allowed to compete at #2 regattas, which is a solution > that > addresses your point. > > Joe Sullivan > Coach > Fordham University Sailing Team > > _________________________________________________ maisa mailing list [email protected] http://www.collegesailing.org/mailman/?listname=maisa
