The US Sailing Team Practice this past week in Miami made me think about my beginnings in this sport and where I have come in a relatively short period of time…
When I started sailing back at the Cleveland Yachting Club sail camp, the biggest goal anyone talked about was sailing at Jr. Bay Week. This week long event was (and still is) the biggest youth regatta in all of US Sailing’s Area E, and is a week of sailing on a secluded island on Lake Erie where parent, coach and adult intervention in general is discouraged and so youth from the age of 13-18 have a week of “freedom” with some sailing against others from the area.
Since this regatta was a quarter final for the US Sailing Championships (until US Sailing discontinued all quarterfinals), it was quality competition but it was really about the week long party. So everyone under 13 just waited until they were 13 to start racing.
I was a bit to into racing at 8 years old (the Friday races at camp were all I thought about) to wait till I was 13, I talked my Dad into letting me race at regattas. That changed my outlook on my sailing life. I quickly realized that there was so much opportunity to race, meet new friends and sail in great, far off places in this sport to just want to wait till I was 13 to go to Put-In-Bay.
So the years have passed (and I still have not sailed in Jr. Bay Week) and my goals have continued to escalate. One year ago when I aged out of my Optimist Dinghy and decided to sail F16’s, I set my goal on the 2016 Olympics knowing that at such a young age I would be fighting an uphill battle for the entire quad but that I had a chance and would learn so much through the experience. Today I am on the US Sailing Development Team (an honor only offered to ten youth boats in the entire country) and this week I attended my first US Sailing Team Practice.
While I am sure that this is the first of many US Sailing Team practices, I found that 8 straight days consisting of 12 hours of workouts, classroom discussions, on the water training and debriefs all leading up to a much needed session of physical therapy at Jaguar PT (the US Sailing Team’s Training and Therapy coach) was both enlightening and exhausting. Oh, did I mention that I had to come home and do 4 hours of schoolwork each night after it all?
So the training was intense and I learned more in one week of sailing than I think I have in the past year, but the experience of sailing with the top sailors from the USA and Canada in the Multihull, 49er, FX and 470 classes and discussing issues of sail shape, trapping, body movement and positioning and realizing that we were all seeking to expand our knowledge and learn from each other so we could dominate our respective fleets at upcoming regattas was quite an experience. Many of the youth sailors left after the weekend, so it really was the best of the best for the remainder of the week and I recognized that I was learning as much from everyone as they were learning and paying attention to my input. We were working and learning as a team!
This past week was exhausting but was the biggest thrill up to this point in my sailing career. Being part of the US Sailing Team and really interacting with the team and dealing with coaches, sailors and everyone involved with making the practice and all our other events come together smoothly really served as a motivator to me to keep working just as hard to accomplish my goals for the future.
Katie and I are going to sail a lot in Miami over the next few weeks and are going to drive up to Lake Hartwell for Spring Fever together and then we are going to fly out to Long Beach for the CISA clinic in April, are coordinating an International youth clinic in Miami for May and then the Gonzales and Bristol clinics in Newport for June! We will definitely attend every US Sailing Team practice that is offered. We are focused, determined and going to be working hard to win the Youth Champs in August so we can go and win ISAF Youth Worlds in 2014 and continue our success through Rio!
All in all, practice was a huge success for me. I learned a lot, got motivation for moving forward and am so much more connected with the team so I know I have the support moving forward to achieve the level of success I have planned as my goal!
Thanks to everyone from the US Sailing Team for making the first US Sailing Team practice of the quad such a great experience for all of us, and to Miami Yacht Club for literally giving us the run of the club for the entire practice. I know I am going to love my next few months in Miami and my summer adventures as I work to become the #1 multihull team in the USA and the world!