The University of Texas Sailing Team is a nationally competitive
club sports team of the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
. Their goal is to expand the love and knowledge of competitive
sailing
Sailing employs the wind—acting on sails, wingsails or kites—to propel a craft on the surface of the ''water'' (sailing ship, sailboat, raft, windsurfer, or kitesurfer), on ''ice'' (iceboat) or on ''land'' ( land yacht) over a chose ...
throughout the university community and their conference at large.
The club encourages participation from all undergraduate students at UT, regardless of experience although the club also recruits students with
high school sailing
The Interscholastic Sailing Association also known as ISSA is the organization that serves as the governing authority for all sailing competition between both public and private secondary schools throughout the United States. The organization's ...
experience. Each fall and spring Texas Sailing fields competitive coed and women's teams in the
Southeastern Intercollegiate Sailing Association district of the
Intercollegiate Sailing Association
The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) is a volunteer organization that serves as the governing authority for all sailing competition at colleges and universities throughout the United States and in some parts of Canada.
History
The fi ...
, travelling around the country to race in intercollegiate
regattas. The club also hosts two or more regattas annually, as well as an annual Alumni Regatta.
The team is governed by a board of student officers.
National championships
Texas holds 4
National Championships
*The team won the
Team Racing National Championship in 1973 with
SEISA.
*Kelson Elam, Kelly Gough and Scott Young won the
Sloop National Championship in 1979.
*Scott Young, David Chapin and Mark Hallman won the
Sloop National Championship in 1981.
*
Bruce Mahoney won the
Men's Singlehanded National Championship in 2001.
Sailors
Paul Foerster competed at four Olympic Games in sailing: 1988, 1992, 2000, and 2004, winning a total of three Olympic medals.
Sailing venue
The University of Texas Sailing Team sails out of the
Austin Yacht Club on
Lake Travis
Lake Travis is a reservoir on the Colorado River in central Texas in the United States.
Serving principally as a flood-control reservoir, Lake Travis' historical minimum to maximum water height change is nearly 100 feet. In 2018 alone, it saw ...
.
Fleet
The fleet of the University of Texas Sailing Team's dinghies includes 18 Vanguard
Flying Junior
The International FJ is a Dutch sailboat that was designed by Uus Van Essen and Conrad Gülcher as a trainer and one design racer, first built in 1956.
The boat was initially called the Flying Dutchman Junior (after the Flying Dutchman ...
s (FJs).
History
The UT Sailing Team began in the late 1960s, probably 1968; however the actual year is the subject of some debate. It began as a club for students to go and sail at the Austin Yacht Club. Not long after its inception the team split into two distinct groups, the Sailing Club, a more casual non-competitive faction and the Sailing Team. After the split the Team moved rapidly to become a major player in college sailing.
References
External links
Website
1968 establishments in Texas
Texas
Texas (, ; Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2020, it is the second-largest U.S. state by ...
Sports clubs established in 1968
Texas Longhorns sailing
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