Well, since I kind of stopped paying attention to this for a while, I never said anything about how Nationals turned out. So even though the 4 people that will actually read this were either there or have already heard about how it turned out, I’m writing anyway.
So the event was held out of the New York Yacht Club in Newport, RI from June 2-4. I ended up sailing B division, due to the type of boats sailed, the conditions, and recent results. We only had 2 races the first day due to crappy breeze, in which we got a 5-3 in B and an 8-9 in A. An excellent start, good enough for 4th place after Day 1, and just 5 point from the lead.
We had quite a few more races on Day 2, 10 in each division. The day went fairly well overall; we did drop two spots to sixth, but we were still ahead of a lot of good teams. We didn’t have any excellent races, but we did have a lot of good ones. Our scores were 9-9-7-9-10-13-13-6-6-6, pretty solid consistency.
Six races were scheduled for Day 3. We started off well, with a 5-3 in the first two races. The next two weren’t nearly as good, a 16-10, our worst set of the event. The next race started off extremely well, getting one of our best starts of the event, and heading to the left side of the course. Unfortunately the right worked out really well for the people over there, and despite winning the left side, we were still a bit behind coming into the first mark. We managed to get back to finish 6th in that one, still respectable considering the competition.
We were able get another great start in the last race. We protected the right side, which worked in the previous race, and managed 3rd around the first mark. We held with the first two downwind. They both picked the upwind-right gate, while we went to the upwind-left gate. We split with the leaders, heading out left, and were able to take advantage of a current change from the previous race due to the course being in a different spot. We headed back right about halfway up the beat, just barely crossing the first place boat (Conn. College), and tacking on their hip. As soon as Conn went to tack and duck us, we tacked with them to lead back towards the middle. We were able to pinch them off and force them to tack off. We went with them, and were able to hang on their hip until layline to the finish. The first place finish held our spot in 6th overall, beating Charleston and Yale by 9 points after they finished with an 8th and 12th, respectively.
Overall, a great event for us, and a great event for MIT, the team’s best finish at Coed Dinghy Nationals since 1964. We finished 4th in B Division, and our teammates finished 12th in A Division. Full results can be found here, and the blog from the event here, and pictures. Lots of fun, too bad the format change didn’t come until this year.
We unfortunately didn’t have any All-American selections for any MIT skippers or crews. (The selections are announced at the banquet following racing.) However, we did end up beating a total of 2 (of 13) All-American skippers and 4 (of 6) Honorable Mention All-American skippers in division results, which was nice. Hopefully we’ll have a couple of people on the All-Academic Sailing Team, which comes out in September. We had one First Team and one Second Team last year. Each school can nominate a maximum of 3 people.
So I previously had no problem with the Rays, or the Devil Rays before them. They were never much of a threat in the AL East, and I liked their style. A team full of young, fast, underpaid guys. They seemed like they would be a great team to root for. However, my opinion of that team has taken a turn for the worse. I was happy for their current success after so many terrible seasons, but no longer. Now I want them to go down, hard. No, it wasn’t the fighting or the suspensions or the fact that they have a 3.5 game lead in the AL East and the best record in baseball. It was this. The Rays decided to play a mock version of “Sweet Caroline” after sweeping the Sox last night. I also found out that they played it after the last series in Tampa as well, which they also swept. Too far, Tampa Bay, too far.
I’m not one to mess with karma, and I’m fairly superstitious, as well. I’m not a fan of trash talk when I play any sport, especially not in the middle of a game (or middle of the season, in this case). Hopefully Rays fans realize that we’re just past half-way through a 162 game season and we haven’t even made it to the all-star break yet. I think it was put best at Surviving Grady: (referring to “not earning themselves any karma points”)
In fact, I’m betting that with this maneuver, you have sealed your fate, Tampa Bay Rays. Forget the postseason. Forget the Jay Leno interviews and ticker tape parades and a trip to the moon on the President’s personal hovercraft. The Gods of Baseball are a fickle bunch, and while your post-June relevance has been the feel-good story for the first half of the 2008 season, I think you’ve doomed yourselves to bridesmaid status in the AL East.
So, hopefully this comes back to bite them in the ass come September. If they want to be the feel-good story of the season, they can’t go out picking fights and mocking other teams. You can’t be the bully and be the one everyone is rooting for. So maybe they’re picking bully. Which is fine. But that doesn’t mean that all the ESPN announcers are going to recognize this. And if we have to listen to another 3-4 months of how much the Rays have turned around, and how great Scott Kazmir was the last 3 years despite being on one of the worst teams in the leauge, like we did last night, I think I’m going to shoot myself. Or maybe just the TV. Either way, I’m not going to be happy. I really wish I had Don and Remy right now.
In other news, Nathan’s International July Fourth Hot Dog Eating Contest is tomorrow at Noon on ESPN. I’m ready for Joey “Jaws” Chestnut to once again take downTakeru “Tsunami” Kobayashi, and this time without the controversy over Kobayashi’s “jaw arthritis”. Apparently the contest is being shortened to 10 minutes from 12 this year, per historical contest rules.
More posts to come soon. I’m gettin back in the game.
The new format for ICSA Dinghy Nationals showed up just in time for my last season. We qualified for the championship in Newport, June 2-4 after finishing 5th this weekend at the Western Semi-Finals at USC. Of the schools that qualified for Nationals, 8 are from NEISA (New England conference, including BC, UVM, Conn College, Harvard, Yale, Brown, MIT, and Roger Williams), 6 from MAISA (Mid-Atlantic, including St. Mary’s, UPenn, Hobart/William Smith, Georgetown, Kings Point, and SUNY Maritime), 2 from SAISA (South Atlantic, College of Charleston and Univ. South Florida), 1 from PCCSC (Pacific Coast, Stanford), and 1 from MCSA (Midwest, Wisconsin). Only 3 teams from NEISA/MAISA combined that qualified for Semi-Finals failed to qualify for Nationals, indicating the strength of those conferences. Western Semi-Final Scores and Eastern Semi-Final Scores.
This is a big change from previous years, where the breakdown was 4 NEISA, 4 MAISA, 2 SAISA, 2 SEISA (Southeastern), 2 MCSA, 1 PCCSC, 1 NWICSA (Northwestern), and 2 at-large berths. The old format often left out teams in the stronger conferences that were not able to qualify at their highly contested conference championships. This should prove to be the most competitive Dinghy Nationals in recent memory.
The new Semi-Finals format was also a great experience, as we were able to compete against teams I’ve never sailed against in my 4 years, including Notre Dame, Northwestern, Minnesota, and Western Washington.
This is MIT’s first appearance at Nationals since 2003, and hopefully it won’t be another 5 years until the next time we qualify. With the new format, it shouldn’t be.
Also, it would be nice to get some more recognition from the Tech. We managed to make it in under the Scoreboard as “Sailing: ICSA National Western Semifinals: 5th of 18″, which is not an incredibly telling description, given the level of competition. At the same time, there is a full story about how the women’s tennis team lost two tough matches at the end of their season in today’s issue. Eh, oh well. Maybe we’ll make it in on Friday. We did make the MIT Athletics page and held the front page for a little while, with this story.
So people keep telling me how great this rolling luggage concept is, but I’m not buying it. People with rolling luggage just piss me off. The only acceptable time to have wheels on your luggage is when it is nearly physically impossible for you to carry the bag for the distance necessary. This usually corresponds to bags that are also well over the weight limit for planes. I can handle older people using rolling luggage, as I’m probably going to throw my back out at some point (hopefully not too soon) and I’ll also require some wheels. But until then, I’ll carry my stuff, thanks.
The largest offenders have to be the people with rolling carry-on luggage. I mean come on. It’s called “carry-on” for a reason. I don’t need you in front of me as I’m trying to get to my seat trying to slam the handle back into the bag, or taking up enough room for 3 people with all the space your bag takes up behind you. This also effectively triples the number of people walking through the airport, making it impossible to quickly get from one gate to the next. I have to try pretty hard to restrain myself from slyly kicking over rolling carry-on luggage and snickering as the traveler tries to keep it from toppling over.
The only thing that may even be worse than rolling carry-on luggage is rolling backpacks. Seriously? You need wheels for a bag designed to be slung over your shoulders? A bag that actually conforms to the shape of your back? Wow. That’s pretty bad. Do you also take the elevator from the first to second floor? And use the handicapped button to open the door for you? Oh you do? Well I guess that makes sense then.
For the record, I do own ONE bag with wheels. It is big enough to put a full size person inside, or all the clothes that I own. I use it maybe once a year when I’m moving all of my stuff from one place to another. But I don’t use it for a weekend trip where I’m only bringing my computer, two changes of clothes, and a toothbrush.
Next time you go to the airport, thinking you’re hot shit because you don’t have to carry anything, watch your back, because I’m going to kick your bag over.
After Brett Favre’s retirement, the Green Bay Press-Gazette said it distributed 50,000 extra editions at $1 per copy on Tuesday for its Favre coverage, the newspaper’s first extra edition since Sept. 11, 2001. More here.
Answering a nationwide appeal for tall people with athletic potential, more than 50 prospective Olympic athletes have been placed in British training programs for the 2012 London Games.
More than 3,800 people applied to be part of the “Sporting Giants” project. They were tested for their skills in four Olympic sports — rowing, handball, beach volleyball and indoor volleyball.
Making the cut were 34 rowers, 11 handball players and seven volleyball players. They have been integrated into various British Olympic training squads.
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Male candidates had to be taller than 6-3, while female candidates needed to be taller than 5-11.
In other news, I stayed up way too late messing around with the colors and borders on the site, not sure if I’m done yet or not. Probably not, I like to fiddle with it. I’m open to suggestions as well.
Somehow this video is even more ridiculous than anything I’ve ever seen in Friday Night Lights. And that’s tough to do. Check it out below, and make sure you watch the entire video. Description from youtube is “Amazing ending to a 1994 High School football game, Plano East down 41-17 with 3 minutes to go.” See it on youtube if you prefer.
So MIT finally gets a band that I would want to go see for Spring Weekend, and then goes and schedules the concert when I hope to be at the ICSA Semi-Final Dinghy Championships. Third Eye Blind is set to play on April 25th in Johnson, but I hope to be headed either to SoCal (USC) or Middle of Nowhere, NY (Hobard/William Smith). The top nine teams in New England sailing get to go to a semi-final event to determine who goes to the North American Dinghy Championship. This is the first year that ICSA (the governing body of College Sailing) has used this format, and hopefully it will give the very deep NEISA (New England Intercollegiate Sailing Association) conference the chance to send more than the usual four teams to NA’s. Last year, despite having 9 teams (including MIT) ranked in the top 18 in the Sailing World poll, NEISA was only allowed to send 4 teams to NA’s.
Oh well, I guess this is what happens when you commit to a team that takes pretty much every weekend from September to November and March to May away. Lame. Well, I guess there would be one benefit to not qualifying. But I’d much rather have the chance to go to NA’s than see the concert. Definitely.
MIT is currently ranked 11th in College Sailing (a coaches poll, run through Sailing World magazine) and 7th in NEISA (also a coaches poll). But, the only thing that matters to make it to the Semi-Finals is the 67th Coast Guard Alumni Bowl, or New England Dinghy Championship, held at Salve Regina April 12th-13th. Top 9 from there make it to Semi-Finals at either USC or Hobart/William Smith on April 26th-27th (four to one venue and five to the other).
Somehow I completely missed Groundhog Day this year. As it turns out, Punxsutawney Phil has predicted six more weeks of winter. Check out the wikipedia article on Phil. An early spring has only been predicted 14 times in the last 112 years.
