PCCSC Hosts Inaugural West Coast Championship Regatta

On Nov. 8 and 9, the Pacific Coast Collegiate Sailing Conference (PCCSC, college sailing’s West Coast conference), hosted its inaugural West Coast Championship Regatta in San Diego. The event was officially classified as a regional interconference regatta, with seven of the 17 teams coming from conferences other than the PCCSC.

While there are plenty of interconference regattas hosted on the East Coast — college-sailing powerhouse conferences in New England (NEISA) and the Mid-Atlantic (MAISA), which often feature PCCSC teams making the cross-country trip — this was one of the first major interconference regattas to be hosted on the West Coast. The PCCSC hopes this trend continues to grow.

“The West Coast Championship is a regional interconference regatta,” PCCSC commissioner Brad Schaupeter tells Latitude. “It was the inaugural year and gave the PCCSC a chance to play off against some teams from other conferences on their home turf. It was filled with lots of camaraderie as our sailors bbq’ed for all the teams at the end of racing on day one. Doug Hart ran incredible racing as PRO. We essentially are building an event in one of the best racing venues in the country at a time when racing is shutting down everywhere else, but the West Coast has glorious racing conditions. The event will be a grade-two next year so we’re hopeful we’ll get even more interest.”

“The racing was incredibly competitive, with six different teams winning races,” Brendan O’Connor, a junior on the UC San Diego team (who officially co-hosted the regatta along with San Diego State) tells Latitude. “Saturday started off cloudy and foggy, and delivered an atypical light breeze in Mission Bay. Eventually, the fog burned off and the California sun came out. On Sunday, the sun came out and the sea breeze filled in, delivering Mission Bay’s perfect 10-knot westerly. SDSU and UCSD spent the weekend battling it out at the top, with Stanford and USC battling for third. This was some of the closest racing I have seen on the West Coast.”

Eighteen races were sailed throughout the weekend, with nine each in divisions A and B. When the dust settled, it was San Diego State who took the win in the regatta with 61 points. Between A and B division, the Aztecs won eight of the weekend’s races, buoyed by the A division duo of skipper Ian Nyenhuis and crew Sadie Marinerstein, who won the final four A division races.

In second place, seven points behind the winners, was the other San Diego team, UCSD, with 68 points. The UCSD boats combined for five bullets, but were not quite able to match San Diego State’s consistency. The Stanford Cardinal were a distant third place with 92 points, seven ahead of fourth-place USC with 99.

The event was dominated by PCCSC teams, with all of the top seven being West Coast teams. The first non-PCCSC finisher was the NC State Wolfpack in eighth, one of the better teams in the Southern Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Conference (SAISA) over the past few years. Also visiting from out of conference were the Clemson Tigers, Wisconsin Badgers, University of Chicago Maroons, Michigan Wolverines, Hope Flying Dutchmen and Texas Longhorns.

Time will tell if the West Coast Championship will catch on as a major college sailing interconference regatta, but it is off to a positive start. If the regatta can catch on, as the PCCSC hopes, it could help create more such regattas, making it easier for West Coast teams to showcase their ability without having to always fly to the East Coast to do so.