Opti Pre-Season Meeting

Next Wednesday, August 24th, from 5:30pm-7:00pm we will be having our Opti Fall Orientation and Cookout that is mandatory for all Opti sailors and their families. Come meet our coaching staff and learn the ins and outs of our Opti Program. We look forward to seeing returning sailors as well as some new ones!

LYC Wins Team Race Nationals - Regatta Debrief

A year of team development, team-race immersion, and tough close calls finally came to a resounding conclusion and we are National Team Race Champions! It was a weird regatta, with storms interrupting the middle day of racing, and the 2nd round unable to be completed - not to mention all 5 of our sailors, having raced internationally this summer fighting through varying levels of burnout /intercontinental jet lag. The expectations were sky high - anything short of winning the nationals would have been viewed as a huge disappointment to all the sailors and myself, and the stakes were real: a trip to Germany to compete in the Optimist Team Cup for the winner only.
     The competition was good - the number 2 seed CRYC spectra boasted 2 eventual top 5 finishers in the Fleet Race nationals, including winner Stephan Baker, had team raced together at the preceding North Americans, and were overall probably the fastest overall team. LISOT Black was the 2 year defending champion, and had Justin and Bella's World's teammate Thomas Hall.
   Still, we managed to stay in control of the regatta throughout every stage. We went 11-0 in the qualifying round for a share of the lead, began Day 3 by beating Coral Reef  in the race that would have decided the regatta had the nearby storms moved in (as had been predicted), and ended the races that ultimately counted with a 14-2 record and the win for the team of Mitchell and Justin Callahan, Bella Cassaretto, Joey Meagher, and Connor Boland. The Trophy returns to LYC for the first time since 2011.

     The Coral Reef Race was by far our best "Team Race" of the regatta. After getting boat speeded by the pairs going up the left of the course, we came into Mark 1 desperate to slow down the race. Justin followed Stephan into the mark, and tried to draw a Rule 13 (While Tacking) foul on Stephan as he crossed head to wind to round the mark. But the Call went against Justin! I believe the umpire interpreted the situation to be the following, as described in "The Call Book for Team Racing:"

Justin had studied the call and felt that he was not altering course immediately before the contact occurred (this would put him in the right), but one still had to appreciate the call book knowledge displayed by the Umpires! The saving grace in the midst of all this was that Joey was able to get over the top of Stephan, roll him on the reach leg, and perform the "Move of Death" - cranking in ones sail on a reach leg for maximum blanketing effect - while Bella and Mitchell sailed by. The teammates then gave help "Playing back" until Justin was out of 8th, and we approached mark 3 with a Solid 3,4,5,6. When the CRYC sailors leading the race had to come back and give us the 1, we converted to first a 2,3,4,6, then a 1,2,3,7, with Justin keeping and Gaping the ace to take the drama out of the race even as Stephan threatened to pass Joey on the last leg and Bella had to re-do the passback. Incredible team racing, a refusal to loose, and commitment to one of our team race mantras: "If we are solid with our Plays they will give us a better one!"
     More races were sailed that did not count in the final standings - Team Race Appendix P states that races in incomplete rounds shall not be scored - here Iv added all the races sailed to the final results.

1. LYC 1                 18-2
2.CRYC Spectra     16-3
3. LISOT Black      15-4
    LOOT Blue         15-4
5. LIMA Red           14-5
6. CERT Blue          10-9
7. LYC 2                  9-9
8. CERT/SCYC       9-10
9. LISOT Cayanne  9-11
10. BCRP                8-10

It was really gratifying to see the LYC 2 team of Jonathan Siegel, Giulio Zunino, Lucy Meagher, Bobby Rielly, and Ryan Satterburg compete soo well - they beat Coral Reef in on of the last races of the regatta, and took LYC 1 down to the wire in both our races with them! Its a testament to the work we have all been doing with team racing this past year that they could execute the team race moves (passbacks and Mark-Traps) with the best, and a credit to their coach Chris Williford that they were able to jell and improve throughout the regatta - they had never sailed together as a team before the practice day! Having 2 LYC teams do so well portends great practices to come!

Full results, tables, team members etc can be seen here. 


Team History 
This approximate iteration of LYC 1 began team racing together last fall at the LYC Team Race, and two specific individuals deserve recognition. Garret Dixon, who as one of the original team members was instrumental in developing the team cohesion, and the teams initial success on the water. Having been coached by me longer than most of the sailors he knew my playbook the best, and helped us develop a system where everyone understood what the other was going to do based on the situation, and trusted them to do it. He was our self appointed "Chief Synergizer" or "Synergizer in Chief" and deserves credit for the championship. Pili Callabresse introduced the concept of "Team Synergy" to the group, counseled us (all of us) through that first finals loss at the LYC Team Race, and was the kids primary fleet race coach through the fall. Id also like to thank the sailor's parents and other coaches: Lior, Lucas, Joakim and others for their help and support!
    Given the kids busy fleet race and regatta schedules, we probably practiced on the water a total of 6 days over the year and sailed 2 regattas before the Nationals. To make up for this deficit, we scheduled extra classroom time, which often took the form of "Distance Learning" conference calls with shared materials in front of all of us - wether it was our playbook or pages from the Call Book. We improvised - when we had people in only 2 locations we could Skype, but when it was 3 or more Alissa Callahan would set up an interface that allowed 1 group to be viewed by everyone else - it allowed me to draw pictures and hold them up to the screen on our last call from Newport.
    The meetings unfolded in 2 ways: I would ask questions of the sailors on what concept to apply to a given situation and what they should do, and the sailors would have input on parts of the system, as well as goals and what they wanted to work on. The former was not so much about answering questions correctly for me - it was about demonstrating to ones teammates that one was deserving of trust and the kids for the most part (minus Joeys unannounced 10min bathroom breaks) took it seriously. The area the kids had the most formative input was on the start strategy they wanted to implement.
   Just before the Nationals, I had all 5 team members take a written Playbook Knowledge Test. They crushed it - all scores above those of our 3rd skipper at High School Nationals the past 2 years and Bella aced it! Chris Williford, a past Opti Team Race Champion was really impressed by the kids knowledge - the game of 4v4 team racing seems to be evolving!
   
Team System
Our system of team raced system is a concept based approach that I adopted from College team racing for Optis. While to some "Play" is a verb, to us, "A Play" is a noun denoting an achievable, stable finishing combination. 1st, 2nd, 3rd, anything (team wins regardless of 4th boat's finish) is the most stable combination, and we call it "Play 1." When we have achieved the play one, our accompanying concepts are "SZCB" - Speed, Zone, Cover, Balance. If the Play 1 is not achievable because the other team is winning the race and winning more pairs, we always have the fallback of "Play 4" - 3,4,5,6 where the other team is held in 7th and 8th and thus looses the tiebreaker. Other teams call this play "Suicide" or "Forcing the Tie" and we actually don't call it Play 4 but I can't tell you everything! The concepts for Play 4 are different - not everyone sails fast! Instead, we run a Gap/Push concept, where the pushing boats know to go Play 1 as soon as they can. We have a couple weaker plays that we can utilize on our way to Play 1, but the basics of 4v4 team racing is the Play 1 or the Play 4. In numerous races, our kids did a great job of figuring out quickly if they had a Play 1 opportunity, and Balancing it. When we lost the start and didn't have it, we would start aggressively slowing whatever 2 pairs we could get, sometimes even on the first leg!
    There are 2 basic start systems for team race starting: matchup and zone. In a matchup start, each team member starts trailing a specific opponent at 2 minutes, with the goal of pinning them away from the start (like a match race). The goal of beating your pair supersedes the goal of starting on time. The zone start by contrast calls for limited engagement, and assignes each team member an area of the line to start on. We ran a unique hybrid of the two systems, the specifics of which the kids designed so I won't reveal!
     At this regatta, we encountered some very unconventional opposing starting strategies - from CRYC -  "Build A Wall" approach, to BCRP - "always lead back," to LOOT's always help out a teammate even at your own expense move. Before each race there would be a dialogue with and amongst the LYC 1 sailors on both the strategy and personnel we were expecting from the other team on the start and how we should attack/defend it. For example, we went into the CRYC with a strategy for beating their Wall (which might have worked better) but a game plan of making them match up with us on our terms. They never built the wall, but still started pretty well playing our game!
   One idea I try to reinforce with the starts is the idea of spacing. We never want one of their boats to luff up 2 of ours! While we didn't win as many starts as we probably should have during this regatta, I think spacing allowed us to avoid catastrophy so we could always team race back. Connor figured out how to help this on his own the first day and it really got our team's starts going. Even though he was supposed to start somewhere on the line, he would hold his pair above and to the right of the committee boat, giving all his teammates more room to operate and control their pairs. Then at about 35 seconds, he would leave his man, speed reach under the committee boat, and start on time. Connor sailed exceptionally on Day 1, being part of a 1,2,3 in almost every single race, including the win vs LISOT Black.
     It was by no means a perfect regatta - many of the mistakes CRYC made against us we allowed ourselves to do in our loss to LOOT on Day 3 (we had already beat them on Day 1) - namely, not solidifying the Play 1 (1,2,3,X). The boathandleing, starts, and general repetition are all areas we need to improve on if we hope to Place in Germany. But for now, we are happy to have reached a goal long awaited and fully strived for.

Arthur Blodgett