The Ile Camera
A Heritage Newspaper
Weekly Publication
Sailors cap season at Great Lakes event
PUBLISHED: November 21, 2008
Grosse Ile's sailing team capped a successful fall season last weekend with a top-10 finish at the Great Lakes Championships in Chicago.
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A handful of sailors also went to the Great Oaks Invitational Regatta in New Orleans.
The Great Lakes regatta brought together teams from throughout the Midwest Interscholastic Sailing Association region. This year's event was the largest high school regatta ever held in the Midwest, drawing 30 teams representing 22 high schools.
Entrants came from as far away as Minnetonka, Minn., to Traverse City.
The competition combined the scores of the double-handed 420 A and B divisions with a Laser Radial sailor score, requiring a consistent team effort from top to bottom. The Red Devils finished ninth in the 30-boat fleet, solidifying their position as one of the top ten teams in the Midwest.
Grosse Ile was led by junior sailor Peter Polgar, who finished fourth in the Laser Radial fleet with a performance that included two firsts in the 12 races sailed.
Polgar's finish was the highest ever Laser Radial result by a Red Devils sailor in the nine years the team has been competing at the championships. This season's class included several nationally ranked sailors.
Junior skipper Ellen Dubois paired with freshman crew Libbi Miklos to finish 10th overall in the 420 B division. Their best single-race finish was a fourth.
The duo sailed consistently, with mostly single-digit finishes. The lone exception came in the fourth race, where the race committee that they were over the starting line and scored as not having started.
In spite of that, the girls sailed well, considering it was only their second regatta together and Dubois' second regatta skippering a 420.
In the 420 A division, juniors Libbi Dust (skipper) and Catherine Plischke (crew) finished 21st, with a best single race finish of seventh. The pair encountered some bad luck, including a broken mainsheet block in the sixth race that left them well behind the fleet.
The team came back, however, to pass five boats on the final two legs and finish ninth.
The 420 A division also saw sophomores Alex Karrar and Kathlyn Lyons finish 27th after a best single-race finish of 16th.
More than 100 sailors battled strong, shifting winds that swirled around the skyscrapers of downtown Chicago. They encountered snow showers, 30-degree air temperatures and 40-degree water temperatures.
The regatta saw multiple capsizes, but good work by safety crews got all the sailors up and going quickly.
While most of the team was in the Windy City, Grosse Ile sailors Patrick Duffett and Montana Pruett traveled to New Orleans to represent the school at the Great Oaks race on Lake Pontchartrain.
The pair was one of only four MISSA teams to qualify for the regatta, a national event that draws many of the top prep teams from across the country.
Duffett and Pruett had to wait out the weather on Saturday, as high winds and cold temperatures forced a cancellation. The race committee made up for the delay on Sunday, when 16 races sailed in less severe conditions.
The Red Devils finished 18th in the 28-boat fleet, with a best single-race finish of fourth. By the end of the day, with no breaks after seven straight hours of racing, both sailors were exhausted.
It was the last fall regatta for Duffett, the only senior to compete last weekend. Ten returning letterwinners are expected back next season.
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