The Athletes Journal is an article written by the athletes, giving their point of view.Imagine you have a puzzle, now take that puzzle and look at each piece individually.

Imagine you have a puzzle, now take that puzzle and look at each piece individually. You start to see that each piece has its own background to contribute to the greater image. Once these pieces have enough time together, they start to become one and the individual specific pieces do stand out above the rest. Stony Brook’s Sailing Team has become the image we want to display.

Last week, on Friday Sept. 27 the Stony Brook team traveled for nine hours to arrive at William and Mary College. During this long drive, we all started to really open up to each other. We learned about each other’s life stories, sailing histories and future goals. This drive was critical to the development of the Stony Brook team’s image.

The following day, Saturday, Sept. 28 finally arrived…race day! With winds ranging from 8-15 knots and a high of about 70 degrees, we were able to participate in 14 races throughout the day. Starting at about 9:30 a.m. and racing non-stop till 5:30 p.m., everyone was excited to take part in every race and Stony Brook made it known that we were there and ready. At the beginning of the day, Stony Brook was just another competing team with no threat and nothing for the other teams to worry about.  At mid-day, however, Skipper Constantine Spentzos and Crew Cody Murphy pulled through for Stony Brooks first bullet, or first place victory. The excitement did not stop there because in the next race we were able to get another bullet, this one earned by Skipper Zachary Kyritsis and Crew Heather Grosso. These back-to-back bullets were exactly what we needed to stir up the pot. Soon enough, members of other teams were starting to talk about how Stony Brook came out of nowhere, how Stony Brook was doing so well and how at that point in time, they knew Stony Brook was a team that was not going to give up. At the end of this long day, one could see in everyone’s faces that we had a great time and were happy to be there, although we were drained from all the sailing.

I do not know about the other teams, but our team continued to bond all night long. We all got cleaned up, put on nice clothes and went out to a beautiful restaurant where we had an amazing two hour dinner with laughs, stories, jokes and a developing family. It was truly a dinner nobody will soon forget.

Finally, day two of racing was here. Sunday, Sept. 28 was another beautiful day. The temperature was about the same, but conditions were a bit lighter, with winds only ranging from 5-7 knots. President Zachary Kyritsis, really showed leadership on this day when he gave up his spot on the boat in order to let Gregory Sarafin Crew for Heather Grosso, who was now the Skipper. That day, we were able to fit in six races and our racing day ended at about 1:00 p.m., but we all knew we had another nine hour drive ahead of us. That did not hinder the excitement of the team though. We knew that we had more pride, school spirit and fun than any other team. It was easy to tell that we now functioned like a Stony Brook family. We congratulated our sailors every single race, we cheered them on and at the end of the long weekend, we were able to pull off 4^th place overall.

This weekend was amazing to say the least. Not only did the team make inside jokes, sail well and have a lot of fun, but our “team” became more than that. We were now the Stony Brook sailing family. The memories made that weekend will never be taken from us. We will strive to become even better and hopefully after all the hard work, long practices and dedication we will be able to pull off first place in the near future.