A Parent's Perspective

A (non-sailing) Parent’s Perspective: What U.S. Sailing Might Learn from the U.S. Optimist Dinghy Association (USODA)

Editorial note:

This piece emphasizes the necessity for a comprehensive development pathway for young sailors, stressing that most ILCA sailors are minors who rely heavily on parental involvement (not just ILCA but every junior class). The parent’s experiences and observations provide valuable insights into how U.S. Sailing and the ILCA class can better support youth sailors, making competitive sailing more accessible and sustainable for families nationwide.

By Jennifer K

Though I’m now a “sailing parent,” I’m not a sailor; I wasn’t raised among people who joined yacht clubs or tied up boats at backyard docks.  My husband decided our seven-year-old daughter should join a local Opti summer program and learn to sail.  This all seemed like fun for several years, but eventually, our daughter realized there might be more to Opti sailing than bobbing around in Spa Creek in the heat of July.  She came home asking how to take her sailing to the next level - but neither my husband nor I knew what this might involve.

At the time, Annapolis did not have a year-round Opti program.  The summer coach told us that local kids who were nationally competitive in Optis did much of their winter training in Florida and summer training with travel teams that hired a coach and arranged housing, transportation, and chaperones. He explained the USODA development pathway, which had clear steps and even clearer incentives for the hundreds of little sailors who enter the Opti class every year.  Through trial and error, my daughter and I figured out enough to enable her to progress through the USODA milestones. She achieved her goal of qualifying for a USODA international team, then wisely decided at age twelve to switch from the Opti, which she had outgrown (Opti sailing favors kids who are relatively small and light), to whatever boat came next.

Because our other kids played different travel sports, it was rare that my husband and I could both attend our daughter’s regattas; somehow, without expecting to, I took on sailing while he traveled to soccer games and swim meets.   This meant that in addition to being affordable, my daughter’s next boat had to be very portable:  something a teenage girl and her mom could load on a trailer and transport to regattas unaided. I also thought that perhaps my daughter should choose a boat that would reward her as she continued growing taller and stronger.

The ILCA fit all those criteria, but once she’d made that decision, we faced a bigger question: how did one become an ILCA sailor?

The USODA, which is run by parents, understands that developing a large pool of competitive young sailors requires close coordination with their parents, many of whom, like me, are new to the sport and don’t live close to a year-round Opti program.   As explained on the USODA website, kids who want to advance in Optis can enter the Horizon program, an initial development stage, and then, based on performance at key events, be invited to the Optimist Development program.  Both offer regular regional training events with high-level Opti coaches.  

Kids on this pathway learn quickly that if they participate in two annual national selection regattas, they might do well enough to receive an invitation to a series of USODA-organized teams that travel to international Opti regattas.  At the top of the pyramid, forty sailors are chosen for a U.S. national team that travels to the Opti Worlds.  Kids who achieve this pinnacle are celebrated on social media by USODA, creating a powerful incentive for their peers.   Equally important, USODA leverages the experience of its veteran parents to organize team travel and logistics and coaching and chaperones (and to obtain group rates), so that inexperienced parents of Opti sailors aren’t left puzzling over how to travel to a foreign country and arrange charters and accommodations and coaching on their own.

Once my daughter chose the ILCA, I expected that either the U.S. Sailing or the Laser Class Association would provide a similar structure for youth sailors.  From what we had observed, the ILCA 6 class at national regattas had become as large as the Opti classes, often with fleets of more than a hundred boats. That’s a lot of sailors, and except for a handful of college-age and masters competitors, the vast majority of these ILCA sailors were teenage boys and girls - none of them old enough to organize, much less pay for, any travel, competition, or training. Parental involvement was still necessary, so I looked first to the U.S. Sailing and ILCA class websites for guidance.

Surprisingly, at least to me, the class association website simply listed major regattas and maintained rankings, while the U.S. Sailing website offered only a slick “Project Pipleline” graphic with vague concept statements.  From the collegiate ILCA sailors we met, we heard about an ILCA Olympic development program. Still, no one seemed to know how sailors would be selected, and in any event, that program fell apart, an apparent casualty of internal conflicts at U.S. Sailing. 

My daughter did have seasonal access to a summer Chesapeake Bay area ILCA training group. Through that program, we learned by word of mouth that most pathways to progression in the ILCA also seemed to lead through Florida.  Aspiring ILCA sailors from our area would sign up as “satellite sailors” with one of the handful of highly competitive ILCA club teams based in Florida, and their parents would foot big bills for winter training and national regattas, where the costs of travel, charter, coaching, and accommodation easily exceed $5000 per event.  Unlike USODA, no national body coordinates ILCA sailor development and training or assists with logistics, even though most sailors in this class are minors who can’t do this for themselves.

My daughter, a junior in high school, has now been sailing in the ILCA 6 class for four years.  In that time, I’ve tried to help her identify and take advantage of training and competitive opportunities. She’s begun to see the results of her hard work:  this year, she was the first female ILCA 6 finisher in at the Orange Bowl International Youth Regatta and sailed in the U.S. Olympic Trials. In two months, she will travel to her first international ILCA U21 World Championship - the costs and logistics of travel to an international regatta have, until now, seemed prohibitive. Still, the coach of her Florida team insists she needs to take this step.  We want to make her dream a reality, but we know the expense of her training and travel is not sustainable with college tuition bills looming.  Along the way, I’ve often wished we had the structure and support of a USODA-type program for ILCA.  

Much ink has been spilled about the proper development pathway for a handful of older sailors who are current Olympic contenders. Still, I would urge U.S. Sailing to recognize that ILCA sailors are predominantly minors, including those kids who will be Olympic hopefuls in the future.  As minors, they can’t train, travel, or compete without the active involvement and financial support of their parents.  If U.S. Sailing and the ILCA class could provide these parents with detailed guidance, along with a structured year-round development program that offers high-level training opportunities and reduces costs, the development pipeline for competitive youth sailors might not be so constricted by geography, affluence, and the sailing knowledge of the parents themselves.  

Finally, as an outsider to the insular world of competitive sailing, I find the lack of congruence between college sailing and Olympic development strange.  All the 2024 contenders at the ILCA Olympic Trials who were older than eighteen either were or had been college sailors. Nearly all competitive youth ILCA sailors, including mine, will go on to college.  Many Olympic class boats may be too expensive, fragile, and thus impractical for collegiate sailing; ILCAs are anything but.  Sponsoring competitive opportunities for collegiate ILCA sailors, especially during the time between the winter and spring college seasons, seems to be one possible approach that could benefit both collegiate programs and U.S. Sailing’s Olympic development goals.

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Editor’s note: I’ve contacted US Sailing, the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association, and the North American ILCA Class for a response. All are excited and grateful for the opportunity to add to the discussion and appreciate Jennifer voicing her views and experiences. Stay tuned for more content from these groups and other parents to continue this very important conversation.