RALEIGH, NC (May 2, 2023): NC State Sailing's coed team won the 2023 South Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association (SAISA) conference championship in impressive fashion. For the second year in a row, NC State has come out as the top team in SAISA, this year by a larger margin of victory of 16 points over second-place University of Miami and third place Florida State University. As SAISA Conference champs, the Wolfpack will return to the ICSA College Sailing Fleet Racing Open (Coed) National Championship Regatta in what marks their third consecutive trip. On the women's side, NC State Sailing's women's program finished the regular season in third place overall in the SAISA Conference, but ranked 22nd nationally and were awarded an at-large bid to the ICSA College Sailing Fleet Racing Women's National Championship Regatta, their second consecutive trip to the season.
In the SAISA Conference Championship regatta held on April 8-9 at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, FL, NC State took the lead in the regatta after the fourth race on what would be a sixteen-race event. In A-Division, junior skipper Adam Larson (Charlotte, NC) and sophomore crew Sean Harris (Wilmington, NC) tied for the division lead with the Hurricanes from Miami while in B-Division, junior skipper Isa du Plessis (Ft. Lauderdale, FL) and junior crew Olivia Sowa (Hollywood, MD) earned an outright division win beating the College of Charleston squad by 7 points. Overall the Wolfpack finished with 58 points for the regatta win and conference title.
"The hard work we've seen from our sailors all year, from the whole team all year, really paid off in the challenging and competitive conference championship regatta this year," said NC State head coach Dana Magliola. “We started the spring season winning a big regatta at Eckerd College so returning to this venue for conference championships, our team was ready and prepared to do well.”
NC State will now compete in the ICSA Women's Fleet Racing National Championship regatta, a four-day event hosted by the United States Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point, NY on May 23-26th followed by ICSA Open (Coed) Fleet Racing National Championship regatta, also at the USMMA from May 30-June 2nd. With limited funding from the university, the program is fundraising to finance this campaign. Tax-deductible contributions to support the team can be made to the SailPack Foundation. For more information visit: go.ncsu.edu/Sailing or contact Dana Magliola at [email protected], or 919.946.5445.
