Sailing World College Rankings, November 12th 2015

Sailing World’s College Rankings, presented by Gill and Sailors for the Sea, are determined by an open coaches poll. For more information on the poll, or on how your team’s coach can become a part of it, visit http://bit.ly/9jqgev. The number of first place votes a team received is in brackets. This is the fourth national ranking for the Fall 2015 season, based on results through November 11th.

For easy viewing and sharing, the PDF is available here:

Charles Higgins, the assistant coach at Old Dominion, checks in with his thoughts on this week’s results:

The last couple weeks have shaken up the rankings a fair bit, with some breakout performances along with some deeper finishes from teams many expect to finish closer to the top.

On the women’s side, University of Rhode Island took the Victorian Coffee Urn regatta with a strong performance from its A division, thereby supplanting the U.S. Coast Guard Academy atop the rankings. Some coaches noted that the Lady Bears did not have their top team present and still gave them plenty of support with several 1st place votes. Interestingly, Yale still picked up a 1st place vote despite having not won a Women’s Interconference event this season, although they have had multiple top 5 finishes.

On the Coed side of the rankings, Boston University, Cornell, and George Washington made significant moves thanks to outstanding finishes at their respective conference championships. Boston University made enough of an impression to garner a 1st place vote. The vast majority still went to Georgetown, which has undoubtedly been the most consistent team this season. They have finished 1st or 2nd at every Interconference event so far this season and have certainly earned their top ranking.

This past weekend also saw Georgetown’s Haddon Hughes ’19 and Yale’s Malcolm Lamphere ’18 taking their respective crowns in the 2015 LaserPerformance Women’s and Men’s Singlehanded National Championships. Each secured the championship in the closing boat lengths of the final race, and their performances no doubt helped their teams in the eyes of some coaches submitting votes as well. The fall season will be finishing up soon but before it does, the Atlantic and Pacific Coast Championships will take place this weekend giving teams another chance to prove where they belong. We haven’t seen much of the west coast teams go head to head with Stanford so it will be a good gauge for the rest of us to see how it shakes out. Given that so many top teams will be competing this weekend, new names may pop up at the top and some teams that have been sitting precariously near the top of the rankings may drop. But once again — that’s why they play the game.

Also receiving votes: Eckerd, SUNY Maritime, Univ. Pennsylvania, Fordham, Univ. Virginia, Florida, UC Santa Barbara, Vermont, Hawaii, South Florida, Southern California, Kind’s Point, UC Berkeley, Western Washington

Also receiving votes: Boston University, Eckerd, Fordham, Hobart/Wm. Smith, UC Santa Barbara, Navy, MIT, UC Berkeley, Cornell, Hawaii, Southern California, Roger Williams, Christopher Newport, Harvard, Western Washington

19 coaches participated in the poll: Fordham, Harvard, SUNY Maritime, Georgetown, Vermont, Stanford, Univ. Pennsylvania, Brown, Dartmouth, Coast Guard, South Florida, Mitchell, Bowdoin, St. Mary’s, George Washington, Hobart/Wm. Smith, Christopher Newport, Eckerd, Cornell