2009 SFWMRT News
Happy New Year!
Well, a little late for a New Year’s greeting, but the San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team has already been busy and have more busy plans for 2009!
The SFWMRT will be doing fewer events this year, but that does not mean we will be less involved with the development of women’s match racing and progress towards the women’s match racing event in the 2012 Olympics. Liz has been appointed to a 4-year term as the US representative to the Match Racing Committee for the International Sailing Federation (ISAF) and as part of that appointment has been appointed to the Match Race Ranking Sub-Committee and as Chair of the Nations Cup Working Party. These are all pretty big deals in the political realm of our sport and will mean that Liz will have a fair amount of influence in the direction match racing takes over the next few years. Pretty exciting stuff. She will also maintain her role as Executive Director of the Women’s International Match Racing Association (WIMRA) and in fact is flying off tonight to run a clinic in El Salvador for women sailors from El Salvador, Honduras, and Guatemala. And, in the next month, will be conducting clinics in Mexico, New Orleans, and Texas. Over the summer we will be involved with more clinics and also helping develop more match racing training and events in the US and abroad.
What does all this mean for the SFWMRT’s own racing program? For 2009, we’ve decided to scale back a little and begin laying the groundwork for our run towards 2012. We are planning on doing four events this year: BoatUS Santa Maria Cup (Annapolis, MD) in May, Mayor’s Cup (Long Beach, CA) in July, Busan Cup (South Korea) in October, and Carlos Aguilar (St. Thomas, USVI) in December. These events work well in our calendar and are events we enjoy while hopefully still helping maintain our ranking points on the World Ranking. You’ll also see some of the team members popping up at different events to continue to hone our skills even if we are not there as a full team. For example, last month some SFWMRT team members (Katie Pettibone, Carol Cronin, JoAnn Fisher, Liz Baylis, Molly Carapiet, Jamie Haines, Dana Riley, Alice Manard) took part in the Rolex Miami Olympic Classes Regatta and the match racing clinics surrounding it.
It’s an exciting time for women’s match racing and we hope you will be part of the development and continue to support our team!
As always, you can follow what we’re up to on www.LizBaylis.com as well as follow the development of women’s match racing at www.wimra.org. If you would like to help, both the Belvedere Cove Foundation (www.belvederecove.org) and WIMRA (www.wimra.org) are 501(c)3 Non-Profit Organizations and can always use your financial support! Liz would be more than happy to assist you if you have any questions about contributing! (-;
We’ll keep updating you with team news as it becomes news!
Cheers,
Liz Baylis and the San Francisco Women’s Match Racing Team