The UCSB sailing team placed second in the UCSB-hosted Fall Pacific Coast Championship Sailing Competition this weekend, with only a one-point margin behind Stanford.

“The team did incredibly well this weekend,” Head Coach Brad Schaupeter said. “I don’t think I could be more proud.”

Stanford placed first in the three-division scoring event with the lowest score of the competition at 158. UCSB followed with a close 159 and Long Beach State came in third at 176 points.

“This is what we hoped for,” Captain Grant Rickon said. “A top-three finish and one point from first, I’d say that’s an accomplishment.”

Along with a three-division event, the regatta also scored a two-division event, the Fall Dinghy Championship, in which UCSB placed first. A two-division event is standard for most regattas, as well as the national championship.

“We crushed the two-division event,” Schaupeter said. “It’s a pretty big deal, because we basically beat one of the top five teams in the country this weekend.”

Among the top performers of the regatta were sophomore Lucas Ryder, and freshmen Joe Schiff and Stephen Long. Long won his varsity B division and finished in the top three places throughout his races in the regatta.

“The last event that I went to on the east coast was against a lot of really good teams,” Long said. “It forced me to get good at starts, so in this competition, the starts didn’t seem so bad.”

By placing second in this regatta, the UCSB sailing team will have priority choice over which spring regattas they would prefer to register in during the rest of the season.

“Different conferences host intersectional regattas, and we pretty much get first pick of the east coast regattas,” Rickon said.

Even with a larger point difference away from Stanford after the first day, the team felt hopeful that it could close the gap.

“We really thought we were going to be able to bring home first place,” Ginger Luckey said. “In the end, Stanford was just able to minimize their mistakes when we had a couple extra.”

With the Fall PCCSC being the biggest regatta of the fall season, the team plans to use the outcome of this weekend to prepare for the even larger regattas approaching with particular attention to faster starts and boat speed.