Navy Spring Womens - Coach Report

It was my pleasure to coach the Cornell Womens' Team at the Womens Navy Spring last weekend. It was also quite a challenge from more than one aspect. First, I had never met any of the girls prior to the report time of the first day. The team of 4 sailors was Hillary Paulsen and Anisha Chopra in A-Division and Emily Bick and Isa Betancourt in B-Division. One interesting fact that was brought to my attention right up front was that Anisha was attending her first regatta and the weather, rain and lots of wind, was surely going to test her right away. The rest of the girls had varying levels of experience, but overall they were somewhat over their heads as a team in the setting of a major womens' intersectional.

Needles to say, if you happened to see the results, the team struggled significantly the entire first day. We did have a good sit down discussion at the lunch break and another at the end of the day which seemed to help settle the down the anxiety of the day's events. While we discussed many things, the theme I tried to get across to the girls was to use the experience to be better the next time. It would be very easy, and understandable, to just forget that day altogether and try to block it out of your mind. We tried to look at it from the point of view that the conditions and the situation was foreign to all of them and to try to take away all we could from the experience. That would hopefully allow the sailors to have a foot forward the next time a similar situation, or similar conditions, presented themselves.

Day two was better for three of the four girls. Anisha had become ill overnight and was unable to sail the second day and with only four sailors at the event, the team was forced to borrow a sailor from another team (which is allowed in this type of circumstance). Overall the girls sailed much better the second day, dramatically improving on their performance from Saturday. Hillary became so much more comfortable on Sunday, we got her pushing the starting line much more aggressively and trying new techniques with starts and tactics.

Overall I was impressed with the girls in both their character and determination. The ability to take a completely dreadful situation and not only make the best of it, but to work toward improvement was fun to be a part of and watch.

Thanks,
Geoff