The Bainbridge High School sailing team is known for competing against the best, and they did just that again this season by winning two national-level regattas.
The BHS sailing team previously won the Northwest Interscholastic Sailing Association Team Racing Championship in 2024. This year, BHS went to six national-level regattas (a series of sailboat races), placing first in two of them.
“We push ourselves to get that exposure and to get to compete against teams that are at such a high level,” Haley Lhamon, the former head coach for BHS sailing, said. “And then we bring that knowledge and skills back to the northwest and share what we learn.”
The team has a total of 15 students who will continue on sailing in college. Joseph Tappen, a 2024-25 team captain for the sailing team mentioned that a majority of the BHS sailing team will be going to different universities across the country to continue their sailing careers, such as the University of Southern California, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Tulane, Northeastern, and the University of Washington.
However, sailing itself requires training and preparation from early childhood. Stella Selah, also a 2024-25 team captain, said the team begins with youth programs to teach the kids the basics of sailing.
The training for the team encompasses a week-long schedule of different exercises that require more endurance as well as core-focused workouts. On Mondays, Lhamon said the team tries to handle bigger waves and “wind and chop.”
“If it’s windy, then they get a lot more of a physical workout, but also time to work on their techniques, which are totally different when you’re sailing in big wind and waves,” Lhamon said.
Lhamon noted that the practices are also very competitive and give the sailors opportunities to test their skills against each other. The BHS sailing program also hosts clinics in the spring where they will “bring in high-level coaches from outside the area” to help the sailors.
Some of their training does not occur in the water, however. Selah notes that a lot of people on the team are interested in being outside, so a tradition the team has is to go to Crystal Mountain and go skiing every year, simply because “we like to be outside and just enjoy the great nature of the Pacific Northwest.”
Nonetheless, it takes more to be a sailor rather than just the physical aspects of sailing. Tappen and Suraj Siddiah, a fellow 2024-25 team captain, note that a core element of sailing is also strategy.
“It’s reading the wind and reading the water,” Tappen said.
Tappen goes on to explain that good sailors can watch the water and see where the “puffs of heavier wind are coming down,” allowing them to know where to sail. Siddiah adds that “it’s about adapting to different changes in the environment and making sure they don’t slow you down.”
Selah added to the strategy element of sailing, saying that it’s an “intrinsic part of what it means to be an islander.
“Everyone can do it [sailing] because it’s not reliant on how old you are or how strong you are,” Selah said. “What matters for sailing is your skill and just being really perceptive and being able to listen to the different sensory inputs that are going to guide you to make successful decisions on the water.”
