The Stony Brook University Sailing Team started this semester ranked 43rd out of 52 teams in the Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Racing Association (MAISA). As their successful spring season campaign winds down they are now ranked 22nd. The team qualified for the Second Tier Regional Conference Championships within MAISA. Stony Brook sent two teams to the North Spring Qualifier Regatta at Cornell University during the weekend of April 13-14.  Varsity squad members Constantine Spentzos and Mary Loffredo sailed in A division and Heather Grosso and Cody Murphy tackled B division.  There they qualified for the lower conference championship race, The Leroy Grant Regatta.

“We had ambitions of qualifying for the Upper Division Championship,” coach Geoff Loffredo said. “However it is a huge achievement just to be in the Conference Regionals.”  At the Grant Regatta in Old Dominion University the Seawolves placed fifth overall and catapulted themselves in the college rankings from 43 to 22.

“The top twenty teams are really the elite teams in the conference.  We really wanted to break the top 20 in rankings.  But we had the biggest leap of any other team.  We also have a very young team.  All of our team members either had little to no sailing and racing experience before joining the team or had raced other boats in the past, but are entirely new to double-handed sailing and the short course format of college racing,”  coach Loffredo said.  “Many of the top teams at this event have sailors that were already established racers before entering college and have many semesters of college sailing under their belts.  SBU has climbed to within reach of those teams and I’m personally proud of all our sailors.  We are looking forward to climbing even higher in the Fall.”

April 22, 2014—The credit for the photo in this article was previously attributed to the Stony Brook University Sailing Team. In response to a comment, the photo has been updated to credit Lee J. Montes, who took the photo during a sailing team practice.