by Julia Soes

Sailing coach

Few communities embrace the sport of sailing the way Orcas does. I remember seeing the high school gym for the first time and thinking “They let them put their championship banners up with the other sports?!” This might not seem like a big deal and would be typical for most sports, but sailing, on the whole, doesn’t get the recognition that more common sports enjoy. Try looking for it on TV during the Olympics.

While sailing might be seen as any other sport in the Orcas community, the high school I attended made sure they kept it at a distance. Sure it’s great for photos and advertisements of what the town offers, but the liability was too high to associate with the school, ignoring for a moment they spend millions on their football program…

Orcas has a strong sports program for a community of our size, but sailing is the only sport I know that competes with schools without the WIAA standards for ranking schools by student population. Orcas High with a team of 14 sailors, competes against schools that have a freshman class that’s the size of the population of our entire island. In spite of this, the sailors are still ranked as one of the top 10 teams in the Northwest and will be competing in the stand-in event for women’s nationals.

During the pandemic, many sailing teams continued to grow and hold some form of competition, Orcas decided it wasn’t worth the risk. The chances of bringing the virus home and harming the community outweighed the rewards associated with continuing the team’s growth. To grow our program, the community has to come first. So during the pandemic, sailing came to a standstill with only a few kids and one coach practicing on West Sound.

In the three years since the team re-established itself in NWISA (the Northwest’s chapter of the national governing body for High School Sailing), a group of strong-willed and motivated girls worked hard to rebuild the program. While alumni have helped and played a huge role, coaches want to help a group that’s willing to learn. The combination of dedicated alumni and sailors with questions and drive has accelerated the team’s growth both in size and competitively with the support of the Orcas community. The Orcas team has been steadily improving with some promising underclassmen following the lead of the girls who sparked much of the team’s growth.

This month those alumni will be again helping to put on the qualifying regatta for the PCISA Girls Invitational (soon we hope, to be officially classified as Women’s Nationals). The girls competing and trying to sail for a chance to go back to San Diego have been leaders and role models for their team. Juliette McKenney, Dagny Kruger, Wren Onjets, Lola Walker, Miranda Wallace Jones, Matilda Twigg, and Else Ranker, have all played a part in the team’s success.

To push the team competitively, they first needed to push themselves. Dagny, Lola, and Else were some of the first sailors willing to go to WIND Clinic (held at the notoriously windy Gorge venue on the Columbia River) as underclassmen. This event was lore and a right of passage amongst the alumni, but that first year none of the sailors knew what to expect. Alumni Taylor Smith and Cameron Schuh loaded trailers with boats and the boats with camping gear, and headed to Oregon Beverly Hillbilies style to get the kids to the Gorge.

These girls attended summer and skiff and all-women’s clinics to better themselves, but they’ve also worked to grow the sport of sailing promote it at their schools, and create opportunities for others around them. Else and Dagny raced to Alaska at the beginning of the summer and now are training their teammates on how to use their boat for local races. Lola attended a skiff clinic over the summer and came home and got right to work sorting out how to get our skiffs running again. They not only succeed but share that success with those around them.

Last year, Dagny, Juliette, Lola, and Wren qualified to sail at the PCISA Girls Invitational. The Orcas community fundraised the money to send them within a week. Having kids committed to the team and program’s growth, and having alumni, coaches, and a community that backs them is a recipe for success that we couldn’t be more proud of.

While sailing isn’t always the easiest sport to understand, we’re happy to explain what’s going on out there and share our passion for it. At the very least, there are worse places to watch sports than the beach or county dock.