Considering that sailing is only a club sport, the sailing team has one of the toughest schedules of any team at Amherst, with races against Dartmouth, Tufts, Harvard, Boston University, and many other large New England schools. While some members of the team have been sailing their entire lives, many novice sailors have joined the club this year. Boasting 30 members,, most of whom race in regattas, the team has grown more serious about sailing in the past few years. They now practice four times a week and usually race in at least three regattas per weekend. The team practices with their eight collegiate 420s on Lake Arcadia. This spring the team will host a race named the Tyrell Trophy.

In each invitational, the team races two boats, an A boat and a B boat, and the scores are combined for the total Amherst team score. According to both Robin Goldman '03 and Jay Harris '02, the team includes some experienced and talented upperclassmen as well as many "committed and enthusiastic freshmae," said Goldman.

Top returning sailors include Peter Beardsley '01, who was inducted into the college sailing hall of fame in June of 2000 and received the NEISA Senior Trophy this past February, and Harris, who was abroad in the fall but has a great deal of experience. Newcomers to watch are Eric Venemeyer '04, who sailed this past fall also, and Caleb Murphy '04, who had never sailed before coming to Amherst but has picked up the sport extremely quickly.

Despite the cold weather, the team recently went to their first invitational, the Icebreaker, at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in March, finishing in seventh place. Despite extremely wintry conditions, "the race went really well for the first race of the season," said Goldman, who looks forward to sailing every weekend and hopes to finish in the top half of teams in the future.