In former head coach John Vandemoer’s final weekend at the helm of Stanford sailing, the co-ed squad won St. Mary’s Team Race InterConference — only to see the woman’s squad place 12th out of 18 in the Navy Women’s Spring Regatta. Vandemoer’s 11-year career with the team came to an abrupt end on Tuesday, when he agreed to plead guilty in a college admissions cheating and money laundering scandal.
Familiar foes Yale and Charleston dominated the competition in Annapolis, posting the only sub-100 scores of the weekend. Stanford, meanwhile, took its 251 points to the back half of the pack, falling even further behind George Washington University than it did on the weekend of Feb. 24-25, when the Cardinal women finished second, with 67 to the Colonial’s 58.
After being postponed twice, the St. Mary’s competition brought out the Cardinal’s better side, with Stanford securing the victory over nine other universities, almost all of which were also represented in the Navy event, with the U.S. Coast Guard Academy being the lone exception.
Stanford was led by freshman skipper Wiley Rogers with senior crew Meg Gerli, sophomore skipper Jack Parkin with junior crew Taylor Kirkpatrick, and junior skipper Jacob Rosenberg with senior crew Kathryn Booker. Boasting an 8-1 record in Sunday’s round robin, a loss to Hobart & William stopped the Cardinal short of a perfect sweep.
With Sunday’s performance, Stanford’s co-ed squad has competed in four race regattas this spring, placing second or better in each of them.
While the waters were far from dead leading into Week 10 of winter quarter, Stanford sailing is on autopilot for a couple of weeks, as its next competitions will not take place until the weekend of March 23-24.
Watch for the Cardinal to batten down the hatches soon, as there will be three competitions that weekend, spreading the sailors across the country for races in California, Rhode Island and Virginia.
Contact Holden Foreman at hs4man21 ‘at’ stanford.edu.
A previous version of this article misstated Virginia as Vermont. The Daily regrets this error.