Georgetown sailing delivered a stunning MAISA championship double over Halloween weekend, claiming both the Fall Women’s title and the War Memorial in contrasting fashion. The women’s team cruised to a wire-to-wire victory on Seneca Lake, while the coed squad ground out a hard-fought nine-point win over host Navy in Annapolis. By capturing both conference championships, Georgetown’s coed and women’s programs will hold the number one-ranked schedule in MAISA for 2027.
At the MAISA Fall Women’s Championship, hosted by Hobart and William Smith Colleges on Seneca Lake in Geneva, New York, 12 teams sailed 420s across two days of varied conditions. Georgetown finished first overall with 53 points, 23 clear of runner-up Columbia at 76. Hobart and William Smith edged Fordham on a tiebreak, both finishing on 104 points, with Old Dominion fifth at 109 and Navy sixth at 120.
Saturday opened in a light southeast wind with one race completed before the breeze died. After a short delay ashore, the wind filled from the northwest, providing beautiful but very shifty sailing, and nine more windward-leeward races followed. Sunday brought a steady southerly and ten additional windward-leeward races.
Georgetown won A Division with 34 points, six ahead of Columbia at 40 and twelve clear of Hobart and William Smith at 46. Emily Doble skippered the division throughout, with Ellie Smith crewing for races one through six and Lucy Jervis stepping in from race seven onward.
The Hoyas were even more dominant in B Division, posting just 19 points to finish 17 ahead of Columbia at 36 and 35 clear of third-place Fordham at 54. Nissa Berman and Anna Brzezinski sailed the entire division wire-to-wire with no substitutions.
At the War Memorial, hosted by the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland, more than 15 teams raced FJs in a weekend-long light-air grind. Georgetown finished first overall with 31 points, nine ahead of host Navy at 40. Hobart and William Smith took third with 44, Penn was fourth at 50, Fordham fifth at 58, St. Mary’s sixth at 62, and Princeton seventh at 66.
Saturday opened at Navy in a northwesterly that clocked to north and then northeast, with two races per division completed in four to six knots after the fleet chased breeze around essentially every patch of water near Annapolis. After a short break ashore, teams relaunched to an easterly filling into Carr Cove that became southeast, where races 3A and 3B were run before pressure dropped under four knots and racing was abandoned for the day at 4:15 p.m.
Sunday held southeast wind hovering around four knots all day, with current flowing out of the Severn adding further complication. Two more races per division were completed, finishing right at the 3 p.m. cutoff, for a total of five races per division on the weekend.
Peter Barnard and Teddy Stoldt finished second in A Division with 20 points, tied on points with division winner St. Mary’s but losing the tiebreak. Queen’s was third at 25, with Navy and Princeton next on 29 each. Pierce Olsen and Abigail Chang also finished second in B Division with 11 points, level with winner Navy and again second on the tiebreak. Hobart and William Smith took third with 14.
The standout performances told the story of the weekend. Georgetown was the only team in the 12-boat women’s fleet to win a division, and they won both. Berman, paired with Brzezinski, sailed every B Division race and posted the single lowest division score of the regatta, 19 points, 17 clear of the next boat.
Remarkably, Georgetown did not win either division in Annapolis, finishing second in both, yet still took the regatta by nine points. Both division results were ties broken against the Hoyas: 20 points level with St. Mary’s in A and 11 points level with Navy in B.
The Hoyas captured two conference titles in one weekend at venues more than 300 miles apart, both decided in sub-10-knot conditions where small mistakes proved costly. Four division podium places over the weekend were settled on tiebreaks, including the top two spots in both War Memorial divisions and third place overall in the women’s championship, where Hobart and William Smith and Fordham finished level on 104 points.
Full results, race-by-race scores, and sailor lineups for every regatta are posted at scores.collegesailing.org.
