New College Sports Its Own March Madness
Sailing Into Intercollegiate Competition

(March 16, 2007) – New College of Florida's No. 1 national ranking by the Princeton Review may be in jeopardy.

No, not its ranking as the nation's "best value" among public colleges and universities for top-notch academics at an affordable price. Rather, it is New College's place at the top of Princeton Review's list of colleges where "intercollegiate sports are unpopular or nonexistent." The college has fielded Ultimate Frisbee teams in college tournaments, and there's the ubiquitous March Madness office pool, but in the past, that's about as close as the 750-student, liberal arts college comes to big-time athletics.

But, on March 24, New College will make its first-ever foray into intercollegiate sailing competition when the newly sanctioned New College of Florida Sailing Team fields a crew in a regatta at Rollins College in Winter Park, Fla.

New College was inducted Feb. 3 as a member of the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association at the annual ICSA meeting in Charleston, S.C. The ICSA is the governing authority for sailing competition at colleges and universities throughout the United States and parts of Canada. Schools compete in seven regional district associations, including the South Atlantic Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association that includes Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama.

Designated as a provisional member in the ICSA for its first year, New College sailors may compete only in South Point regattas and the team will need to compete in at least two regattas per year to move up to associate and regular memberships. The Rollins regatta will be the only one this spring, but sailing Coach Dave Pedersen plans to enter his 12-member team in competitions in the fall.

"We have a couple of good sailors," said Pedersen, manager of New College's Campus Waterfront Program. "We might surprise them."

One is Alice Abernathy – "the backbone of the team," says Pedersen – who gives lessons and is an Optimist boat coach. The other is Sarah Newberry, who won the U.S. Youth Multihull Championship last July in Miami; Skipper Newberry – "who eats, drinks and sleeps sailing" – won with her younger sister, Elizabeth, to become the first all-female team to win the event.

The other 10 sailors on the New College team are: Amanda Caizza, Karlye Dilts, Nathan Duvall, Nicholas Frazier, Elizabeth Hamman, Emily Hazen, Amanda Landesberg, Casey Schelhorn, Erica Schoon and Daniel Ward.

Scheduled to sail at the first regatta at Rollins are Abernathy, Dilts, Schoon and Ward.

For New College, which is starting out with only two working boats, the South Point regattas will serve as a good proving ground, allowing the new team to get their feet wet in collegiate competition before facing the sport's "mainsails," schools like the U.S. Naval Academy, Harvard and Yale universities.

Not that the first-year competition will be easy. Eleven other Florida colleges tout ICSA sailing teams, including schools like nearby Eckerd College, which has competed in sailing since the early 1970s and in February christened a fleet of 20 new Club FJs, adding to its fleet of Club 420s. The FJ, or Flying Junior, and 420 are the fast, two-person racing dinghies largely used in collegiate sailing.

Sailing is a natural fit in competitive sports for New College, says Coach Pedersen (pictured at right), who is a US Sailing-certified Level 1 instructor and a cruising sailor of his own 25-foot boat.

First of all, the campus fronts Sarasota Bay on Florida's Gulf Coast. Secondly, the majority of students at New College are female, and collegiate sailing has no men's divisions; only coed and women's. And, while collegiate sailing requires only a proven ability to swim (50 yards distance and five minutes treading water, both with shoes on), it does involve physics, mathematics and other studies that New College students excel in (at the March 14 practice, the sailing coach brought up with his team of sailors that it was Pi Day, when mathematicians celebrate the mathematical constant).

Then, too, Pedersen adds, New College is a proponent of alternative energy research. "I've wanted to put up a sign for the sailing team, 'Alternative Energy Symposium,' because what else is wind power," he said.

Sailing at New College isn't new: The College has had a sailing club off and on (depending on how active student sailors were) for a number of years. Colin Jordan, director of Campus Recreation at New College, was asked to be the sailing adviser not long after he became the fitness center director in 1998; his involvement in the student-run club tended only to be "when the police called due to an overdue boat and they found socks," Jordan said.

And, there's been the annual Cardboard Regatta (this year on April 7), where New College students build boats of "mostly cardboard" – both paint with rubber cement and piracy are allowed – to race and to float until they don't.

As anyone watching the NCAA's March Madness knows, college sports need funding to be competitive. To add to its fleet – now only two 420s that can be raced – and expand its waterfront program, formerly called "Sail and Trail," New College is seeking private donations of boats.

The New College Foundation's new Boat-Donation Program, which accepts gifts of sailboats, motorboats, trailers, ATVs, cars, canoes or kayaks, is being chaired by boat-builder and 1970 New College alumnus Tom Mayers, owner of Lands End Marina on Long Boat Key.

Jordan said he is planning alumni and other fundraising efforts for the Waterfront Program, which operates "on the strings of shoe strings."

"Frayed shoe strings," adds Pedersen, who is a part-time employee of New College.

To make a donation to New College's Waterfront Program, contact Tom Mayers at 941-383-6598 or by e-mail at landsendmarina@mac.com.

SIDEBAR: Professor Sails for Academics, Learning Experiences

For New College biology professor and avid sailor Al Beulig, intercollegiate competitive sailing has come none too soon to the Sarasota campus. He has pressed for a sailing team in past years, even once writing a "white paper" in its support.

The sailing club's activities, he said, were always "hit or miss" from graduating class to graduating class. He recalled one of the "good years," 1992, when the Russian Whitbread Race team visited New College and interacted with students. And the sinking of the not-so "Lucky Lady" that interrupted navigation in the bay in 2004-05, prompting New College to take a fresh look at its waterfront program.

Sailing as part of the curriculum at New College is a no-brainer to Beulig, who sometimes takes students sailing on his own boats as part of courses he teaches. He even turned sailing into a hands-on learning project this year by sponsoring a New College student, Mike Lee, in building a sailboat.

Lee (pictured below) is constructing an 11-foot, sloop-rigged boat of marine plywood with some mahogany trim in the Sailing Club's boathouse. He's using the stitch-and-glue method to build his boat, following the classic wood boat design he found online. He worked on his craft for his independent study project during New College's January interterm. With the hull completed, Lee was at work layering fiberglass to the deck in mid-March.

Lee, a second-year student from Orlando, came to New College to study biology, but plans to transfer to architecture. He loves carpentry – he built a dinghy in high school – and now wants to build buildings too. He doesn't have a launch date yet for his boat, but Beulig has passed his project.