By Nathan Campbell
Scriptor
Wylie E Groves HS
1st Place
Division 3, News Writing
Sports Feature Story
The cold water was the first terrible sensation that senior skipper Luuk Schmit experienced as his boat capsized in the middle of the second race of the regatta on June 22, 2015.
The second was the futility of his situation as he assessed the state of his boat. In the heavy wind, his sail had ripped in half and the boom spun around his mast. Even after righting his boat, fighting the tangled mess of ropes that had become his rig was all but impossible, not to mention the broken sail.
With a broken boat, Schmit was forced to concede; the race was over.
Since that race three years ago, Schmit has learned from his mistakes. He now has multiple victories in regattas across the Midwest and a state championship under his belt. All this while facing equipment troubles and the reality that he is the only person sailing from his high school.
Senior captain Connagh Rowley from Detroit Country Day has an automatic advantage over Schmit by sailing for a large crew. Schmit, on the other hand, isn’t officially a part of any registered team since Groves doesn’t have an established sailing team.
“Basically I’m practicing at Pontiac Yacht Club with other high school teams that practice at Pontiac Yacht Club, but I’m representing Groves at events. There’s no actual team, but it’s just me representing Groves,” Schmit said.
As the only sailor from Groves, Schmit doesn’t have the same resources and opportunities that people like Rowley or his opponents have.
“We can always switch people out, we always have alternates, and we can compete in higher level races. Schmit doesn’t really have that opportunity. I mean he has all of his friends at the club, but he doesn’t really have any teammates at his school and since not a lot of people are sailing at Groves he can’t compete in higher level regattas like we can,” Rowley said.
Higher level regattas are highly competitive team regattas; they’re often referred to as tier-1 or 2 regattas. Schmit, however, is unable to compete regularly at the highest level because of his lack of manpower. Instead, Schmit can usually only compete in less competitive multi-team regattas where he can sail with another team, referred to as tier-3 regattas.
The only high-level regattas available for a one-man team are usually state tournaments and the Cressy national qualifier in Chicago, where Schmit placed fifth this year. As a complete unknown, he outperformed the expectations of his opponents and head coach Eric Ellison.
While only earning fifth place may not seem impressive, in the national qualifier, Schmit competes against forty other schools from various regions across the Midwest. Coming in fifth place against forty other highly-competitive schools is a significant achievement for Schmit.
“That is something that really is newsworthy. Sometimes schools like to see the people who earned first or second place and they don’t really care about other things. Those were the best sailors of seven states, though. He was in the top class of those kids and he was only a couple of good races away from going to nationals,” Ellison said.
These regattas all use a one-man boat called a “laser”, while the standard boat for high school sailing is a boat called the 420. Since the 420 is much larger and has two sails, it requires two sailors to pilot. A laser, on the other hand, only has one sail, allowing Schmit to sail individually.
One team that Schmit regularly sails with in tier-3 regattas is West Bloomfield High School. Junior captain Nicole Millerman explained how Schmit can fill in for other teams at races even though it won’t count for him. This was especially true at the Traverse City regatta three years ago.
“Since we were in our freshman year, our coaches had really low expectations of us to perform well. I was crewing for my team and we needed another kid on our B-team, but we didn’t have enough kids on the West Bloomfield team, so we put Schmit in there,” Millerman said. “Schmit is pretty good so with his scores combined with ours we took third place overall at Traverse City. It was our first race and it really set the bar higher for our team.” Millerman said.
Along with the challenge of not having his own team for competitions, Schmit also faces financial stress with his sport. Since Groves doesn’t recognize Schmit’s sailing as a sport, Schmit has no funding for expensive equipment. As a result, Schmit frequently experiences equipment difficulties. Some of his equipment can be borrowed from friends in other sailing teams, but a good portion of important equipment must be bought from his own pocket. This includes a particularly damaged boat Schmit had to use for his first few years of sailing.
“I had a boat that was black when I got it, but it turned out to be a yellow boat when I cleaned it off. I called it the yellow submarine cause it leaked a lot and it sank and it had a really crappy sail and it was garbage,” Schmit said. “At my second regatta I was sailing upwind and the wind was really heavy and I had no idea what I was doing at that point. The sail ripped in half and then my boom came off and flipped around the mast a bunch of times and then I capsized. Even when I got my boat righted, I still couldn’t do anything because I didn’t have a sail or a boom, so I just sat there and the waves were huge and I just drifted all the way back to shore. I sat on the shore because my coaches didn’t even notice I was gone. It was a very rough regatta for me and yet I still wanted to go sailing.”
Schmit would deal with the yellow submarine all through his early seasons, picking up wins in the summer season of 2015 until it finally broke beyond repair.
“Once the season ended I had a pretty much rigged new boat because everything that I had broke. And then the boat eventually broke itself cause I was sailing and it was really windy and the mast broke inside of the deck and it snapped the inside of the boat,” Schmit said.
With the yellow submarine out of commission Schmit acquired another inferior vessel that lasted for two years. Schmit took this boat to the state regatta this year, where he ran into problems once again.
“At states this year I rounded the race buoy in first place, then my boat, the vang, which is a really pivotal part of the boat that controls the shape of the sail, ripped the rivets out of the mast, which is not good at all. It broke in heavy winds that were blowing around 25 to 30 miles per hour; it was awesome weather. Unfortunately, though, my boat just snapped and I had to sail in and I retired from the regatta and that was it,” Schmit said.
Schmit also competes in a summer league that participates in a different class of races. Schmit had to use his inferior sailing set-up for a race that went along the Detroit River all the way around Belle Isle and back again, but Schmit still won with a comfortable margin.
“It’s an incredibly long race and it’s terrible but I won it by three miles and it was just fantastic. I was like, ‘Oh great. I won first place so I get to have food,’” Schmit said.
Fighting his equipment failures has been a challenge for Schmit throughout his entire sailing career. Not having access to resources, compared to a well funded sailing team, is something that Schmit has largely become used to in high school sailing.
“When I started off, I looked like a bum compared to everyone. Everyone’s wearing their fancy sailing gear. I still wear the crappiest stuff ever. Everyone’s wearing the fanciest stuff ever and I’m wearing tennis shoes and a bathing suit and that’s it,” Schmit said. “I didn’t even wear a shirt for the National Qualifier and it was fine. People think that sailing is for rich, snotty people, but really any sailing scene are a lot different than the stereotype. You don’t need anything fancy; that’s the real thing.”
Instead of fancy gear, Schmit prefers to focus on strategy in what can be considered a mentally exhausting sport.
Sailors are expected to make split second decisions that can greatly impact their place during races, their body is pushed by performing complex maneuvers all the while hanging halfway out of the boat. All of this is on top of keeping awareness of where their boat is on the water in relation to other boats. Millerman also enjoys the mental gymnastics of sailing.
“It’s not just a physical sport it’s also a mental sport. It’s kind of like, it reminds me of chess, except it’s on the water. It can be dangerous; it can be fun; it’s just everything mixed together,” Millerman said. “It’s a very different form of a sport and it’s the fastest growing high school sport, which shows me that a lot of kids are really getting into it.”
A sailor’s ability to keep a level-head in tense situations can be the reason that they win or lose a race.
“He’s very calm under pressure, even if he is behind or not having his best race. Schmit doesn’t get upset about it; he doesn’t let it bother him. He’ll just let things roll off and he’ll go back to doing what he needs to do,” Ellison said.
Keeping his head has proven to be one of Schmit’s keys to victory as in sailing even a poor start can be turned around. In a regatta, for every race a sailor receives an amount of points corresponding to their place. First gets one point, second gets two, and so on. Regattas are similar to a golf tournament in that the sailor with the lowest amount of points after the last race wins. Schmit took advantage of this point system in his victory at the state full-rig laser championship last year.
“I remember it very clearly because it started off very light and super wavy which is terrible for sailing in general. I started off the regatta not doing very well. I got fifth in most of the races but then the wind started picking up and I started to perform very well. I got placed first five times in a row and I just kept it going the rest of the two days and then I won the regatta. I was very happy at the end. I won by such a margin that I didn’t even have to race the last race.” Schmit said. “I was very happy that I had actually finally done something for my school that’s meaningful.”
Support from Ellison and a few of his other teammates was something that Schmit felt really helped him at the state championship. Usually, he will have to travel to a separate location from the rest of his team and compete by himself. Having a team for support made the difference for him at the state championship.
“It really helped me out, because after every race I finished in that regatta, Coach Ellison was there, supporting me with advice and encouragement. By the end of the entire regatta, I won first place so it felt really good,” Schmit said.
As a solo sailor, this team experience was rare for Schmit, one that West Bloomfield captain Izabel Dziuba especially appreciates.
“Sailing on a big team is a really great experience because you are with a bunch of people that you totally relate to, you spend a lot of time together and you have a passion for the same thing. And I feel like that Luuk always gets left out, he doesn’t really have a team because he isn’t recognized by his school,” Dziuba says.
Schmit petitioned Groves to make sailing an officially recognized school sport, but was ultimately unsuccessful.
“I emailed [Athletic Director] Tom Flynn and [former principal] Cathy Hurley, and they were like, ‘Wow, that’s a lot of money,’ which it is really. I said ‘You don’t have to pay anything; I’ll deal with the money.’ They said that it would still be a liability,” Schmit said.
Though Schmit wished he hadn’t faced multiple odds, especially not having adequate financial support or fellow sailors to lead a competitive sailing team, he enjoys finding ways to win. Through his connections with different teams, such as West Bloomfield, as well as his own rigorous practices, Schmit established a winning record, even if it isn’t for Groves directly.