The St. Mary’s College of Maryland open sailing team secured its second consecutive Mid-Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association Fall Open Fleet Race Conference Championship on Oct. 25-26, 2025, at Seneca Lake in Geneva, N.Y., with Hobart and William Smith Colleges as host.
The Seahawks finished with 60 points, outpacing Georgetown University by 16 points at 76 and the host Statesmen by 19 at 79 in the 18-team field. The U.S. Naval Academy held the lead after Saturday’s racing, posting 41 points through six races in A Division and four in B Division, while St. Mary’s sat second at 47. On Sunday, the Seahawks added just 13 points across six races — two in A and four in B — to claim the crown, as Navy dropped to fourth with 81.
In A Division, junior skipper Nathan Jensen of Sudbury, Mass., and senior captain Brooke Bertrand of Costa Mesa, Calif., tied for third with 37 points alongside the hosts, but finished fourth after a head-to-head tiebreaker favored Hobart and William Smith. The pair logged six top-5 finishes in eight races. B Division saw junior skipper Landon Cormie of Vineyard Haven, Mass., and senior captain Emily Shioutakon of Rockville, Md., tie for second at 23 points, yielding first to Georgetown on tiebreaker. They notched seven top-4 results, including victories in races 5B and 6B.
The women’s team competed simultaneously in the 15-team MAISA Fall Women’s Dinghy Conference Championship on Long Island Sound, hosted by Fordham University in Bronx, N.Y. St. Mary’s placed eighth overall with 209 points, behind champion Georgetown’s 68. In A Division, junior skipper Lina Carper of Carlsbad, Calif., and first-year crew Molly Dowling of Harwood, Md., finished ninth at 121 points, edged out of eighth by Fordham on tiebreaker; they recorded three top-5 finishes in 14 races. B Division brought a sixth-place result of 88 points for skipper Maisy Sperry, a first-year from Dartmouth High School, with junior skipper Cho-Cho Williams of Norfolk, Va., and senior crew Indiana Theurer of Virginia Beach, Va.; the group won races 8B and 9B while adding four other top-5 showings.
Fleet racing in intercollegiate sailing divides competitors into divisions, typically using FJ dinghies for women’s events and 420s for open formats, with teams rotating boats to ensure fairness. Scores accumulate from finishes across multiple races, often 10 to 12 per division, under wind conditions that test tactical starts, mark roundings and wind shifts. MAISA, which governs competition across nine states including Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania, uses these conference championships to seed national qualifiers through the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association.
The college’s sailing facility, part of its waterfront operations, equips students with access to a fleet of over 50 dinghies and offshore boats, emphasizing co-ed and women’s squads under coach Aaron Stidd, a 2015 College Sailing Hall of Fame inductee. Participants, drawn from across the U.S., train on the river’s predictable currents, which mirror competition venues like Seneca Lake’s variable winds.
As MAISA events wrap the fall circuit, St. Mary’s prepares for the Jan. 3-4, 2026, Rose Bowl Regatta at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, starting at 1 p.m. ET. This invitational, featuring top national squads in FJ boats, tests endurance over two days of fleet racing, positioning qualifiers for spring nationals. The Seahawks’ recent form, including a third-place pair at Old Dominion and George Washington regattas in March 2025, signals contention.
The achievements underscore the program’s consistency, with alumni like 1979 All-American Randall Scott Steele advancing to Olympic trials. In a conference where Navy and Georgetown often dominate, St. Mary’s tactical depth — evident in tiebreaker battles — sustains its edge. As winter training shifts indoors to simulators, the focus turns to refining starts and gybes for Pacific swells at the Rose Bowl.
