George Washington University Athletics
George Washington University
College Sailing / Gill Coed Nationals
GW Sailing Advances to Coed National Finals
6/2/2016 12:00:00 AM | Sailing
SAN DIEGO -- Needing a top-9 finish in its division to move on to the finals of the College Sailing / Gill Coed Nationals, GW took eighth place and will now look to put an exclamation point on its historic season over the next two days.
The Colonials, who are racing in the coed nationals for the first time in recent program history, relied upon their strong results from the first day of semifinal racing on Tuesday to lock up the finals berth. GW was in third place after day one.
"We're thrilled to have made it through to the finals, mostly due to our really excellent sailing on the first day of the semifinals," said head coach John Pearce. "Today was much more difficult for us, and we managed to string together some adequate results - but it was a challenge most of the time. We had some great comebacks in a lot of races but we were often not getting off the start line as well as we'd hope to, and not getting off the first leg of the course in great position, but it's a credit to our speed and the perseverance of our sailors that they were able to turn some of those difficult bad positions early in the race to mostly top 10 scores."
Brendan Shanahan and Miranda Bakos took eighth place in A Division, while Kai Friesecke and Riley Legault took seventh in B Division. Friesecke and Legault turned in five top-10 showings in six races, including three top-6 finishes in the 18-team field. Shanahan and Bakos had three top-10 finishes on the day.
"The semifinal is a great tune-up and a chance for us to get sharp, but the finals is really what it's all about," said Pearce. "It's really fantastic that GW is sailing in the final round at this stage in our progression as a team. We're excited to show off what we can do and really do our best sailing of the year in the next two days."
Racing in the finals gets underway at 10:30 a.m. PT on Thursday, and concludes Friday. A live stream of the event can be seen here, while lives scores can be followed here.
