Two St. Mary’s College of Maryland alumni became world champions this month as Alex Curtiss ’16 and Madison Bashaw ’24 helped USA 1 win the World Sailing Team Racing World Championship, held Aug. 12-16 in Stockholm, Sweden.
USA 1, based out of Newport Harbor Yacht Club in Newport Beach, California, beat USA 2 of Massachusetts 3-0 in a best-of-five final to claim the title, needing just three races to close it out. Twelve national teams competed in the event, racing identical 26-foot J/80 keelboats in a two-boats-versus-two format, a change from the three- or four-boat formats team racing has traditionally used. The championship ran 220 races over four days on Stockholm’s Riddarfjärden waterway. Great Britain took bronze, beating New Zealand 2-0.
Curtiss skippered USA 1, and Bashaw was among the other seven sailors who made up the roster. “It’s a dream come true to be a world champion sailor,” Curtiss said. He said sailing to the title alongside longtime friends made the win more meaningful, even as the team worked to stay even-keeled through the multi-day event before the emotion of the finish. Bashaw described a similar feeling once the racing ended. “It’s such a wonderful feeling to have succeeded at such a high caliber,” she said, adding that sharing the podium with the rest of USA 1 was part of what she loves about the team format of the sport.
Curtiss and Bashaw join a small group of St. Mary’s College sailing alumni to win the team racing world title. Previous Seahawk champions include Mark Ivey ’99 and Matt Lindblad ’99 in 2005; Danny Pletsch ’04, Caleb Silsby ’03 and Paige Hannon Silsby ’05 in 2006; and Justin Law ’08, Michael Menninger ’11 and Adrienne Patterson ’08 in 2015.
Though the two hadn’t raced together at this level before Stockholm, both trace their sailing roots to St. Mary’s. Bashaw, who is from the Newport Beach area, said Curtiss and other alumni there encouraged her to attend the public honors college in St. Mary’s City. Curtiss credited the program’s coaches, Director of Sailing and varsity coach Bill Ward and waterfront director and head sailing coach Adam Werblow, with building a program culture around community and curiosity that shaped his approach to the sport. Bashaw said her coaches and professors pushed her to test her own thinking and speak up, something she carried into international competition.
St. Mary’s College established a varsity sailing team in 1980 and has since built one of the country’s top collegiate programs at its River Center. The Seahawks have won 17 national championships, produced more than 150 All-Americans and nine Olympians, and hosted six Intercollegiate Sailing Association national championships.
The Stockholm event also renewed international interest in team racing as a discipline; more than 10 nations have competed in the World Championship in each of the past two years after a roughly decade-long gap in the event’s schedule. World Sailing officials said after the final that they hope the format’s growth could eventually support a bid for Olympic inclusion.
