Typical Weekend of College Sailing Regattas

    Sailing has been a passion for me since I was seven. The fact that I can still do it today and study my career is amazing. Being on a collegiate sailing team is more than just sailing with a couple of friends several days a week and then focusing on your career. It is more like most sports teams where your teammates become your best friends. Here is where traveling with the team becomes an experience that brings you some of the best memories of my college career.

     All college sailing regattas are organized by ICSA which is the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association. Also, the country is divided into several conferences that later in the year meet in bigger regattas. My conference is the South Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association or SAISA. Most regattas we take a part of are within our conference, but we also go to inter-conference regattas. The team has been gaining experience in the past years and have pushed the school to the top 20 nationwide. 

    Every trip with the JU sailing team is different. There could be regattas where half of the team is traveling to the same area or regattas where we wouldn't travel with a coach. We travel all over the country, personally, I have been to Michigan, New York, and all over Florida. In every case, it starts the Monday before that weekend where we know if we are traveling at all. At Monday's meetings, we usually talk about the previous weekend of racing and plan the upcoming week including the regatta that follows. Once we know that we are traveling, the game starts. You usually start looking at the weather forecast to be prepared for that specific climate that the regatta will have. You also know who is going to be your crew (in my case because I skipper) and start practicing all week with them if you were not doing it already.

    After spending the whole week practicing with the person you are going to be sailing on the weekend, you are usually on the same page. We usually travel on Fridays, and we would take the transportation method that the event requires, whether that is flying, or driving. Once we get there, we start preparing mentally for the event and do any grocery shopping that we might need for the weekend. After each race day, we do a little debrief where we analyze what went the right way and what went the wrong way. It is two days of intense racing, with about 6-10 races each day. On Sundays, we pack our stuff and head back home. It is the toughest part of the trip because here is where the tiredness of the weekend kicks in and at the same time you have to switch your game mode from sailing to school. This challenge I think prepares each one of us for tough situations in our future.   

  

    This cycle repeats mostly every weekend with different people. I think that it goes side by side with your career. It helps you get busy and practice the sport that you love at a competitive level while also studying what you want.