Youth Is Being Served Some Humble Pie at Sea

There was a time when the crew of America 3 was sailing’s answer to the Fab Five. Call it the Sensational 16.

Today is not that time.

The five freshman that led Michigan’s men’s basketball team to the NCAA title game looked anything but fabulous in their loss to Duke, the more experienced team and defending champion.

“It seems like they choked, and I guarantee you it’s because they hadn’t been there before,” Stars & Stripes navigator Lexi Gahagan said of the Fab Five. “They had a lot of talent, but they didn’t have the experience of being at that level of a playoff game. I think that’s a little of what (America 3) is going through.”

After roaring through the first three rounds and the first three semifinal races of the America’s Cup defenders’ trials, A3 is also showing its youth.

After digging itself into a 4-1 hole in the series--a pretty big crevice by anyone’s standards--Team Dennis Conner, the fossil crew of this regatta, did it again Tuesday. Its one-minute 47-second victory pulled Stars & Stripes even with Bill Koch’s sailors, to tie the series at 4-4. Conner’s Comeback Kids have won three in a row and four of its their five races.

“It’s like a senior hockey or football team,” Gahagan continued. “You get a lot of freshmen on the team and through a regular season, they’re fine. But you get to the state championship and it’s the seasoned veterans, nine out of 10 times, who will come through.”

Gahagan, a two-time Cup veteran, said Koch’s crew was actually more impressive early on, when Conner’s was struggling.

“Their crew work, to me, looked better the first three rounds,” he said. “Our crew work in the first three rounds wasn’t that good. We’ve come a long way.”

On a veteran crew that returns six from Conner’s 1987 campaign in Fremantle, two others from his 1983 effort and still more who have worked in several capacities with Conner for years, some of Stars & Stripes’ best work has come in the last three races.

“We’re sailing well, we haven’t missed much,” Gahagan said. “The pressure is on (America 3) and it’s starting to show.”

But mistakes by the other guy always make the victor look better, and some blunders by A3 lately have made Conner’s crew look like perfectionists.

“We’re a pretty steady group,” Gahagan said. “If we have to reach one notch above, we can. But it’s not going to be a whole lot better. What I have to think is one group is inexperienced and has the tendency to make the mistakes, and their mistakes make you look better.”

Bill Trenkle, Conner’s operations manager and trimmer, said: “There have been opportunities they’ve given us that we’ve seized.”

Gahagan said the criticism Koch has gotten for his split crews wasn’t as big a deal as everyone made of it. Rather, Koch’s rotating his helmsmen is partially to blame for some recent distractions.

“I would guess the whole thing in the back of the boat got them a little more messed up than anything else,” he said.

Could A3 have jumped aboard Stars & Stripes, facing a three-race deficit and seized what Team DC has?

Trenkle isn’t so sure.

“I think it would be hard,” he said. “Our guys have done a really good job of keeping their heads up, keeping focused and doing their jobs the best they possibly can.”

And keeping the perspective that it’s not over until the last out.

“Once you’ve been through some bad losses and turned it around a couple of times, you know you’re not out of reach,” Trenkle said. “You have to believe that and keep working until it’s all over.

So Stars & Stripes has the momentum going its way, which is nice, but the feeling of satisfaction won’t be complete until there are three more in the bag.

“It’s just like we’re starting the series over,” Trenkle said. “The pressure’s back on.”

But A3 may be experiencing more of it.

“There’s not so much on us because we’ve come further than anyone thinks we ought to have at this point,” Gahagan said. “That allows us to be at ease in what we’re doing.

The reins are tightening at the Aa 3 camp.

“You see that over there,” Gahagan said. “Usually on their boat there’s a real confidence on the starting line. The last three days, especially when Dennis fouled them out (Sunday), you start second guessing yourself.”

No one on Stars & Stripes appeared to be second guessing the decision by Conner to allow crew members to take turns at the stern toward the end of the race Tuesday, while the 17th man was having pictures snapped for his scrapbook.

Gahagan took pictures of one of Conner’s sponsors with Conner and tactician Tom Whidden . . . with America 3 in the background.

“Dennis thought it would be nice for (the sponsor).”