Despite starting the season outside of the top 10 in the Sailing World Poll, the Stanford sailing team has staged a strong comeback throughout this year, most recently jumping to fifth in the rankings after a successful spring season.

“The biggest difference between the fall and the spring was just execution down the stretch at regattas and some maturity from our younger guys,” sophomore crew J.P. Cannistraro said.

The Cardinal graduated 11 seniors last season and eight new freshmen came in to replace them. The women’s team in particular graduated 100 percent of their starting players last year.

“We had some sophomores that needed to step up right away and they really did,” head coach John Vandemoer said.

Because there was such a big incoming class this year, there was more switching around between skipper and crew combinations in the fall, explained freshman crew Kennedy Placek. Now that the individual teams are more settled in, the team as a whole has been able to progress more quickly.

Although the team has made progress in the polls, the sailors still try to not let the World Sailing rankings get to their heads.

“If you’re at the bottom or if you’re at the top you really have to take it with a grain of salt,” said senior skipper and team captain Kieran Chung.

Chung explained that because sailing is such an open-field sport, it’s hard to rely just on the rankings. If you aren’t on the favored side of the starting line or you don’t hit the right wind shift, then it doesn’t matter what your team is ranked.

But being one of the best teams in the country isn’t easy for the Cardinal for a number of reasons.

Almost every weekend, the team has to travel to a sailing regatta on the east coast, and dealing with a three-hour time change can be tough. But the team makes it work. The coaches stagger who is racing when to make sure that the athletes are not flying to the East Coast on back-to-back weekends.

“We are actually giving our players more time off than the East Coast teams are,” explained Vandemoer.

On the East Coast, the best sailors sail every weekend without a break and that is not the case at Stanford.

Also, practicing for sailing is very different than practicing for other sports. For example, most basketball teams have at least 10 players, so in practice they can scrimmage five on five. When the sailing team travels to fleet races there are 18 boats on the line.

“We don’t have 18 boats ever on the line at practice,” Cannistraro said.

It’s also impossible to know what conditions the team will be dealing with at any given regatta.

“It keeps you on your toes; it keeps you thinking all the time,” Cannistraro added. “You have to be ready for anything.”

The women’s sailing team competed in its conference championships on April 19, finishing first out of 12 teams, earning its ticket to nationals at the end of May. The Stanford team finished with 34 points, 36 points better than second-place UC Santa Barbara.

Sophomore skipper Maeve White explained that at their conference championships, they were focusing on not sailing down to the level of the fleet.

“It’s really easy to just sail down to their level and get trapped in the dumb stuff that they might do,” White said.

The co-ed team hopes to earn its trip to the national championship as well this weekend. The conference championship is taking place this weekend at Stanford’s boathouse in Redwood City. Fleet racing will be held on Friday and Saturday with the Carter Ford Team Race Conference Championship finishing off the weekend on Sunday.

But the competition will be a little stiffer this weekend than it was for the women’s team in Santa Barbra.

“For the co-ed side I think the fleet is better,” Vandemoer said.

But he hopes the team racing portion on Sunday will be an easy win for the Cardinal. Vandemoer wants the team to focus on sailing away from the other boats, and rely on speed and boat handling to win races.

However, the Stanford team is already looking past this weekend at bigger regattas coming up soon, namely the Spring National Championships hosted by New York Yacht Club from May 25 – June 4.

In sailing, there are six national championships: three in the fall and three in the spring. The team with the best total at the end of the year wins the overall trophy. The Spring National Championships will conclude this package.

“We really have a chance to win the final trophy,” Vandemoer said. “We are hoping that will be a big win for us at the end of the season.”

Contact Laura Stickells at lauraczs ‘at’ stanford.edu.