Spalding High School Team @ NIT

This past weekend (May 21/22) the Spalding sailing team traveled up to Sharon, MA to compete in the National Invitational Tournament after applying and receiving an at-large berth to the event. They were just out of qualifying after the MASSA team race qualifier at Navy, so they had to make a bid for the NIT to get accepted. The team started out 1-2 on Saturday morning but kept their poise and after making a slight modification to the pairings, the team went on a 6 race win streak to put themselves into a tie for 3rd going into the second day of racing. Day 2 was very difficult as we had 1 race in the morning then about a 3 hour wait until the team got back out on the water for the top 5 (gold) bracket. The team struggled through the first few races but was able to win the last race of that round against Green Farms Academy to force a sail off for 3rd place against Norfolk Academy. The sail off was one of the most intense races of the day, as Norfolk Academy led in a 1, 3, 5 combination into the last leg of the race. The Spalding team was able to unbalance Norfolk Academy and put themselves in a position to finish in a 2, 3, 4 right at the end of the race to steal the win and 3rd place from Norfolk Academy who won 3 out of 4 races in the top 5 bracket to put them in the position to take 3rd from Spalding. We are so proud of the grit that the Spalding team showed to pull together a win when they needed it most and bring some hardware back to Annapolis after not even qualifying for this event. The Spalding team consisted of Ava Farley (Senior), Hugh Carty (Junior), Maddie Washburn (Junior), Owen MacWilliams (Sophomore), Parker Herman (Sophomore), Taylor Collison (Sophomore), and Christina Pierce (Freshman).