Stanford Sails to Third-Straight Women’s Team Racing National Championship
On April 26 and 27, the Stanford Cardinal Sailing Team claimed their third-straight national championship in women’s team racing, in New Orleans, LA. The Cardinal posted a dominant 21-1 record, finishing three wins clear of the second-place Yale Bulldogs, who were 18-4. The regatta featured 15 different teams from around the country, with the vast majority being from the East Coast. Stanford was the lone West Coast team in attendance.
After finishing second at Women’s Team Racing Nationals on home water in 2023 (behind Yale), the Cardinal won in dominant fashion in 2024 on the Charles River in Boston. In 2025, they narrowly edged the Bulldogs in Rhode Island, and have now completed the trifecta.
The Cardinal’s team on the water comprised three senior skippers: Ellie Harned, Sophie Fisher, and two-time defending Women’s College Sailor of the Year Vanessa Lahrkamp. The crews on the water were juniors Kit Harned (sailing with her sister) and Alice Schmid (sailing with Lahrkamp), and sophomore Piper Blackband.
“It’s been awesome sailing with Ellie and Vanessa these last three years, so exciting to end our team-racing season together on a win,” Fisher tells us. “I’m so proud of this team and all of our hard work this year.”
“Such high-level team racing with great camaraderie,” Lahrkamp adds. “Race committee and umpires were troopers in the hot weather!”
“The team sailed really well,” Stanford head coach Chris Klevan adds. “The competition was extremely prepared and polished; the conditions made every race a challenge until the finish. Despite this, we maintained our poise and managed the challenge with grace.”
The Cardinal were dominant in the first round of the regatta, which saw all 15 teams sail each other once. Stanford went through the round undefeated, and finished all but one race in a play one (a one-two or a one-three finish in team racing), beating Bowdoin in a play two in the other race. Of their 13 play-one wins, nine of them were in the one-two. After the first round, the Cardinal’s closest competitors were Yale at 12-2 (losing to the Roger Williams Hawks as well as Stanford) and the Brown Bears at 11-3 (who lost to Stanford, Yale and College of Charleston).
The second round saw the top six teams advance. It was in that round that the Cardinal finally suffered a defeat, at the hands of Yale in a 1-2-5 combination. They beat Brown, Harvard, Dartmouth and Tufts in play ones to stay a win ahead of the Bulldogs, who dropped a race to Brown in the second round.
The final round then consisted of the top three teams. Stanford beat Harvard in a 1-2-6, Brown in a 1-2-4, and then Yale in a 2-3-4 to seal their third-straight national championship.
The regatta came immediately after the Cardinal had finished second out of 16 teams in the Open National Championship, also in New Orleans. The Cardinal were 17-8 in the open regatta, finishing five wins behind the now back-to-back Open Team Racing National Champion Harvard Crimson. In the open regatta, Lahrkamp and Schmid sailed for Stanford, and were joined by junior skippers Reade Decker and Thomas Sitzmann and their crews Callie Hammond and Abby Baird.
The win in Women’s Team Racing Nationals and second-place finish at Open Nationals puts the Cardinal in strong contention to claim the Leonard M. Fowle Trophy (awarded annually to the best overall team in college sailing) for the second-straight year.
Up next for the Cardinal will be the 2026 Open and Women’s Fleet Racing Nationals, hosted by the University of South Florida in St. Petersburg, FL.
You can see the full scores from the 2026 college Women’s Team Racing National Championship here.