August 27, 2007
Becker Wins Lightning North Americans
WC Head Coach Skippers Three-Man Crew to Championship

ANNAPOLIS, MD -- Washington College head sailing coach Geoff Becker served as the skipper of the winning three-man crew at the 2007 Lightning North American Championships, held August 18th-24th in Annapolis, MD. Lightning is a class of three-person sailing dinghies.

Becker's crew consisted of former Washington College head coach and current St. Mary's (MD) assistant coach Bill Ward and Brown University assistant coach Dan Rabin. Becker skippered his crew to a third-place finish in the qualifying round to advance to the championship round. In the championship round, Becker skippered his crew to race finishes of second, fourth, second, eighth, third, and sixth for a total of 17 points. (Each crew's lowest finish was not counted toward its scoring.) This put Becker's crew two points in front of the second place finishers and 10 points ahead of third place.

The 2007 Lightning North American Championships was just the second regatta in which Becker has skippered a Lightning class dinghy. The first-place finish capped off an eventful summer for Becker, which saw him serve as the head coach of the United States sailing team at the Pan American Games last month in Brazil.