Sailing in Marin: Preps competing for Northern League Championship

Up for grabs this weekend is a new trophy – the Northern League Championship Trophy – which will be presented to the winner of the NorCal Divisional Championship at the Peninsula Youth Sailing Foundation, Redwood City. Marin high school sailors competing will represent Redwood, San Domenico, and Tam.

All 33 Northern California school teams registered with the Pacific Coast Interscholastic Sailing Association (PCISA) are eligible to compete. While the annual NorCal Divisional Championship has always been the Bay Area’s spring wrap up event for high school sailing – kids representing their schools – it has never been elevated to the status of a bragging rights event, noted Kimball Livingston, board member for the St Francis Sailing Foundation and former chair of the St Francis Yacht Club junior program.

“This will be the first time there has been a trophy, and I think it’s a rather cool item for a high school trophy,” Livingston said. “I hope the kids will understand that ahead of time, because I think that having something to take back to the school will make a difference to them and to the school.”

The winning team will not only see their school become the first name on the Northern League Championship Trophy but will also be offered a foundation-sponsored trip to race in the Phoebe King Memorial Regatta, an invitational event hosted by the Mid-Atlantic District and sailed in C420 dinghies June 1-2 on Annapolis Harbor.

Looking to repurpose old trophies some years ago, Livingston discovered one significant and seemingly appropriate trophy; that discovery was the beginning of the new award that is the Northern League Championship Trophy. The original trophy was awarded as the keeper for the 1981 California Cup, won by the Six Metre St. Francis VII and sailed by a young crew, all of whom had distinguished themselves as junior sailors: John Bertrand, Paul Cayard, Craig Healy, Steve Jeppesen, and Ken Keefe.

“The skipper was John Bertrand who had won his first world championship at 19 under the guidance of Bill Monti, his coach from four years at San Rafael High,” Livingston explained. “The school never had a team, but Bertrand became an Olympic medalist, so the California Cup that he won is perfect to repurpose for a Northern League Championship.”

San Rafael High coach Dan Brandt is excited that the kids now have something to inspire them as they train. He’s been coaching the team for the past few years and noted that while it is in the phase of being a relatively young team – mainly sophomores and a few juniors – they’re currently ranked ninth overall in California.

“Most of them race other boats regularly so it’s a really solid team,” Brandt said. “The trophy is important; it gives the NorCal event more prestige and the kids something to really to work toward; it encourages them to practice! It’s super cool.”

Redwood kids racing this weekend include in division A: Morgan Headington and Henry Vare, in division B Mark Xu and Whitney Feagin, and the other division B team is Rhett Kravit and Akira Bratti. The A teams race against each other, then the B teams race against each other. At the end of the regatta the A and B scores are combined, and the team with the lowest points overall is the winner.

Headington (17), a senior at Redwood, will helm this weekend sailing with crew Vare (15). He said, “A lot of our focus in practice has been on starts, as well as a small focus on team racing more recently. While I have no expectations for results, I expect that the team will sail its hardest and we will do our best to limit the mistakes we may make. My team’s goal is to win the regatta, as I did with another skipper last year, which will qualify us for the invitational in Annapolis, Maryland.”

Vare, a sophomore, concurred, “We have been training hard focusing, as Morgan mentioned, on our starts as well as fine tuning our boat handling. Our goal this weekend is to win!”

All five of the foundations that support youth sailing in Northern California have offered grants to cover travel costs for the winning team: The Belvedere Cove Foundation, Encinal Yacht Club Foundation, Richmond Yacht Club Foundation, St. Francis Sailing Foundation, and Peninsula Youth Sailing Foundation.

Follow the NorCal Divisional Championship: https://pcisa.hssailing.org/leagues/l/norcal/Norcal/273/390