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Health & Fitness

RBR Sailing Team wins 2013 NJ State High School Championship Regatta

Teams from around the state competed, including CBA and R-FH.

The Red Bank Regional High School (RBRHS) Sailing Team has won the 2013 New Jersey State High School Championship Regatta.

The competition, held Saturday, May 18, at the Shrewsbury Sailing and Yacht Club, Oceanport, was co-hosted by the Monmouth University Sailing Team and was contested in Monmouth's fleet of FJ-class sailboats.

Ten teams from around the state competed for the championship.

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RBRHS won the regatta with a total score of 49 points after the 16-race event.

A first-place finish in a race earns one point, second place is two points, and so on. The lowest point total wins. RBR won four of the 16 races and sailed consistently throughout the series.

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The team was led by senior starting skippers Max Neubelt and Caroline
Garth, with sophomore Dominique Neubelt and junior Allison Peterson as starting crews. Robby Gearon was back-up skipper, and Patrick McCarthy and Sam Gregg comprised back-up crews.

Christian Brothers Academy placed second with 52 points. Senior Jonathan Lutz, along with crew Jack Hurley, won five races. Peter Maes and Kyle Lavin rounded out CBA’s team.

In third place, with 57 points, was Princeton High School, led by senior skippers Scott Barbano and Xander O'Grady. Rounding out the top five were Rumson-Fair Haven Regional High School, with 60 points, and Toms River South High School, with 70 points.

The regatta was close from start to finish. The RBR team found itself in fifth place overall after the first four races, due to the two weakest finishes, a ninth place in the second race and fifth place in the fourth race.

The Bucs managed to climb into a tie for first with CBA after the eighth race, with wins by the Neubelts in races five and six and third-place finishes by Garth and Peterson in races seven and eight.

At that point, Princeton High School trailed by only two points. RBR led CBA by four points after 12 races, but Lutz and Hurley won the next two for CBA to narrow the gap to only one point with two races remaining. Garth and Peterson finished 4th in the next race to Maes/Lavin's seventh, which gave the RBR duo a little breathing room going into the finale’.

RBR and CBA dueled throughout the last race, with the CBA pair finishing one place ahead of RBR, but it wasn't enough to close the four-point deficit, making RBR the regatta winner.

The victory caps off a remarkable year for the Bucs sailing team. On April 13, RBR finished third at the NJ qualifier regatta for the national championships, and
on April 27 they placed second at the Connecticut State Championships, held at the US Coast Guard Academy, losing to Greenwich High School by only one point.

Two weeks later, on May 4, the RBR girls’ team was victorious at the New Jersey State Girls' High School Championships. Skipper Caroline Garth teamed up with crews Gabi and Domi Neubelt to win that regatta decisively over a 10-team field.

High school sailboat racing has grown significantly in New Jersey and nationwide during the last 10 years.

There are 23 high schools in the NJ Interscholastic Sailing Association, and over 500 high schools nationwide participate in the Interscholastic Sailing Association.

High school sailing is excellent preparation for racing on the collegiate level, wherein over 200 colleges and universities have sailing teams.

Among this year’s graduating seniors, RBR's Max Neubelt and MAST's Gabi Neubelt will sail for the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, and Caroline Garth will matriculate to The University of Pennsylvania.

Princeton's Scott Barbano will sail for perennial collegiate powerhouse Tufts University, and Xander O’Grady is headed to Lake Forest College near Chicago. CBA's Jonathan Lutz and Toms River South’s Shelby Jacobs will sail for St. Mary's College of Maryland, and South’s Jimmy Kennedy is heading to Roger Williams, also top-tier sailing schools.

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