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College Recruitment for Fordham University
Fellow and Gal Sunfish Sailors:
As many of you know, I started coaching the Fordham University Sailing Team five years ago when it returned to collegiate competition. Since I retired last year, it has become my full-time avocation. Each year, I have requested your assistance in identifying good students, who are also good sailors, who want to compete at the college level, and several of you have provided promising leads. The first one was for a young lady, Rachel Daugherty, from Little Rock, Arkansas in the spring of 2001. Rachel visited NYC and Fordham in her senior year; fell in love with both, and graduated from Fordham last Saturday with a 3.3 GPA and a double major in Anthopology and Spanish Literature. She sailed for Fordham for four years and was the low point skipper in 2003, when we won our first regatta and again last fall, when we co-hosted with Columbia the 1st Annual Lady Rams / Lady Lions Big Apple Classic. She also served as Team Captain and as Undergraduate North Region Representative to the Middle Atlantic Intercollegiate Sailing Association. All this from one posting on the Sunfish Message Board.
In June 2003, SAILING WORLD selected Fordham as it's first "Up and Coming Program" for the year. The editors were prescient because thereafter Fordham won the MAISA Club Teams' Championship and the Greater New York Area Dinghy Championship while our women's team took 2nd place at the Sugar Bowl Regatta. Our application for varsity status has been submitted to the administration and is under consideration. Our ranking in the 42 school MAISA conference has gone from 26-20-17-12-13 and at this spring's championship regatta for the America Trophy, Fordham finished 11th. Our goal for the fall is to crack the Top 10 in our conference for the first time, and our Five Year Plan is to be ranked among the Top 20 nationally. We can only do this by attracting very experienced sailors, who are committed to succeed on-the-water as well as in the classroom.
Fordham University is in New York City. Our beautiful Rose Hill campus in the Bronx is 10 minutes from our home port at Morris Yacht and Beach Club on City Island, overlooking Eastchester Bay and Long Island Sound. The combination of attaining an excellent education at the Jesuit University in NYC, the best college town in the country, and sailing at a sensational sailing site only seven miles from campus is tough to beat. We have a fleet of nine, soon to be 12, 420s and a very active 138 member Afterguard, our Alumni-Parents-Friends of Fordham Sailing support group, that just completed Phase I of a two phase effort to finance a $1 million Sailing Endowment.
If you know some good high school senior or junior sailors, who seek an academic challenge as they prepare for life in the real world, and who would like to sail in some meaningful regattas against good competition as college freshmen, while having fun doing so, please invite them to visit our web site, www.fordham.edu/athletics/sailing and/or contact me at Joesunfish@aol.com. Any and all leads will be followed-up and are appreciated. Thank you very much.
Joe Sullivan, US 21681
Posted by elisa at May 25, 2005 08:50 AM