Freshmen Nick Gordon (left) and Nick Waldo set sail in the Northeastern Tech Invite hosted by MIT. In another race, the sailing team managed to qualify for the ICSA Women’s National Championship.

For the Harvard women’s sailing team, this weekend brought a do-or-die situation. Finish in the top half of the field at the Reed Trophy, and the Crimson would be guaranteed a spot in the postseason. Finish outside the top seven, and the season would be done.

But Harvard surpassed even its own expectation, finishing second and earning a berth in the ICSA Women’s National Championship.

“Our main goal was just to qualify for semifinals,” sophomore skipper Emily Lambert said. “So it was really exciting that we were able to go above and beyond our goal and qualify directly for nationals.”

The co-eds finished near the top of the pack in their final tune-up before next weekend’s national qualifier regatta, placing sixth out of 18 teams at the Thompson Trophy.

REED TROPHY

It came down to the last race, but the Crimson women stepped it up at the right time, beating Boston College to the finish line in both divisions in the Reed Trophy’s 10th race.

Harvard finished the regatta, hosted by Brown, in second place, just three points ahead of the Eagles, to grab the second and final automatic bid to nationals.

“The weekend went really well overall,” Lambert said. “This was the one chance we had for women’s to qualify for nationals.”

The consistent performance of Lambert and sophomore crew Alex Jumper in the A division propelled the Crimson to take second in the event for the second-straight year.

Though the pair didn’t win a race all weekend, the sophomores placed outside the top four just once—a ninth-place finish in Saturday’s final race.

“We were really excited by it,” Lambert said. “We were just trying to in every race make sure that we worked as hard as we can to minimize the number of points we got, and luckily we were able to be really consistent. It was something we’d struggled with in the past, so it was nice to iron it out this weekend.”

In the B division, senior Liz Powers and sophomore Marie Appel placed in the top three in five of the 10 races, including two wins. The pair finished fifth in the division.

“They sailed really well, we were really psyched,” Lambert said. “We’re just really pleased with it. It was a good team effort.”

At the regatta’s end, the quartet took home not only an automatic trip to nationals—bypassing the semifinal round—but some individual hardware as well.

Jumper and Appel were named to the NEISA First Team as crews, while Powers and Lambert made the second team as skippers. Powers was also honored with the league’s Sportsman of the Year prize.