The pair is set to compete in the College Sailing National Championships, which begin on Tuesday
By: Justin Lafleur
Something that may seem frustrating for some gets Dartmouth junior sailing standout Maddie Hawkins excited.
"Sailing is one of those sports which is really hard, if not impossible, to master," she said. "Whether you're the best or worst person on the water, there's always something you can improve."
Hawkins is a very competitive person, as is her partner — fifth year Aisling Sullivan — which makes them an extremely successful pair. What's especially unique about them is that they're doing it in the open division, competing against men.
Most of the time in open sailing, the skipper (also called driver or helm) is a male while the crew is a female.
"Obviously, there are exceptions," said Hawkins. "Drew [Clutterbuck] on our team is a superstar male crew and we have women's skippers."
Hawkins is one of those skippers.
"It has been interesting to see a shift from my freshman year to now because it definitely was a lot rarer when I was a freshman that two girls or even one female driver would be in the open scene," said Sullivan. "It's definitely not the majority now, but there are a lot more female drivers than there were before."
Hawkins and Sullivan became partners by accident.
"I was sailing with Yumi Yoshiyasu at the time and one of our teammates wasn't able to compete in the upcoming weekend," said Hawkins. "The girl I was sailing with, who was a crew, was also a really good driver and she was able to do both, so she had to drive a different event. Aisling and I started sailing together and we just clicked, it worked and we sailed together all year."
College sailing features two disciplines: fleet racing (which is one Dartmouth boat vs. all the other schools) and team racing (three Dartmouth boats vs. three from another school).
What specifically leads to success in sailing?
"I would say there's a balance between speed and tactics," said Hawkins. "Speed is generally how fast you can get the boat going in a straight line. Tactically, if you see dark water, that means there's generally wind there (which is a good thing in sailing). In the tactical sense, you want to put your boat between that and the next objective."
Not only are tactics needed individually, but also and especially within the pair. Chemistry between Sullivan and Hawkins has grown by the day.
"As a crew, I have a lot of experience sailing with different skippers," said Sullivan. "With our communication styles, I feel like it was pretty easy for Maddie and me. The other big thing is body movements in the boat; we call it boat handling. When you sail with the same person for a while, you get attuned to exactly how they're moving along the boat because you want your movements to be perfectly in sync.
"If you're constantly sailing with different people, it's hard to get into that rhythm," Sullivan continued. "But I feel like at this point now, it's almost automatic for us in terms of boat handling, where we want to move our bodies and where we know we should be at any given time.
"It's muscle memory."
Sullivan and Hawkins have been together for just over a year, but they began developing muscle memory in the sport of sailing at a young age.
Maddie Hawkins
"I'm from Annapolis and my parents are members of the yacht club," said Hawkins. "My dad enrolled me in its summer camp. I absolutely hated it the first time. I was so scared of the boat tipping over, falling in the water and not being able to get it up.
"I wanted to quit."
But then, Hawkins' father told her to either quit and tell the coach…. or try again.
"I was too stubborn to tell the coach I was quitting, so I tried it again and fell in love with it the second time around," said Hawkins. "I was seven or eight years old at this point. Then, I kept progressing and worked my way up.
Aisling Sullivan
"As I was getting older — I was 10, 11 years old at this point — I started traveling to practices in New York, switched to a different boat, traveled a little bit more and sailed nationally and internationally."
Sullivan's start in sailing also came from a summer camp.
"I actually didn't like sailing itself for a while, but I really liked my friends in the sport, so I would keep going back to this summer camp," said Sullivan. "Eventually, I was asked if I wanted to start racing and I did, mostly locally in Chicago."
Sailing quickly became serious for Sullivan, who competed for Club 420.
"Typically, college sailing coaches will be at those during the summers to look at potential high school recruits," she said. "That's how I ended up at Dartmouth."
Dartmouth being a rural location piqued Sullivan's interest.
"Being from the city, one of the main things I loved about Dartmouth was how different it was from where I grew up," she said. "I knew a couple people on the sailing team, so that was definitely a plus. I was super excited to come here for sailing specifically and excited about how different of an experience it would be from how I grew up."
Hawkins actually stayed with Sullivan on her recruiting trip. It was the first college she visited.
"I fell in love with the school," said Hawkins. "It felt like home. Aisling showed me around and I had fun. It felt 'right.'"
Little did they know they would eventually unite as partners, and a successful pair at that, with competitiveness as a common drive and unifier.
"People [outside of the sport] don't think of sailing as super competitive," said Hawkins. "They think we just sit on boats, pull ropes and float around in the water. It's a lot more complex than that and it's a lot more physical than people think.
"Pushing ourselves in the gym, I want to be better than I was last week. And in school, if I get a decent grade on a paper, I want to do better the next time," Hawkins continued. "That competitive nature has really infiltrated the rest of my life."
Success takes not only physical, but also mental toughness.
"You're out there all day and you need to stay mentally 'with it' for every race," said Sullivan. "That has impacted other areas, like pushing myself to get better in the gym, academically or in other aspects of my life."
Sullivan and Hawkins are extremely competitive, but know when to have fun as well.
"Inside the boat when we're racing, we have a more serious tone, but in those moments between races, we usually joke around and take things pretty lightly," said Sullivan. "We know when to flip that switch and turn the competition on. Then off the water and in daily life, we're super good friends and we hang and talk about things outside of sailing."
The duo's competitiveness and mental toughness was put to the test during a regatta this fall.
"It was the second day of the Atlantic Coast Championships," said Sullivan. "We had one race we won, which we were really stoked about it because it was our first race win of the regatta. Immediately after that race, we sailed a couple more races and did pretty well, but that had been our only race win so far.
"We came in for a rotation because we rotate through the boats every two races, and we were told we had to resail the race that we won."
Needing to resail a race is extremely rare.
"It was because of this weird situation with another team and one of the buoys was drifting down, so it created an unfair situation from the race committee or organizing authority's perspective," said Sullivan.
What would Hawkins and Sullivan proceed to do?
"We sailed it twice, won it again, then had two more races to end the day and won both of those," said Hawkins.
"It was a pretty epic."
Hawkins, Sullivan and the Big Green hope for more epic moments during the College Sailing National Championships beginning Tuesday.
The championships will mark the end of Sullivan's Dartmouth career, but not her involvement in the sport.
"Sailing is pretty unique because it can be a lifelong sport at a really high, competitive level," she said. "I'm definitely very interested in continuing sailing after I graduate. Usually post-college, you're sailing bigger boats that may have four people on it rather than two."
Post-graduation, Sullivan plans on moving to Florida.
"I'm going to be the director of a youth sailing race team," she said.
Sullivan will be missed by the Big Green, especially her partner Hawkins, who credits people like Sullivan among her favorite aspects of her Dartmouth experience.
"Dartmouth is the best of all worlds," said Hawkins. "I've had the opportunity to do a lot of things. We have a really good sailing team, which has been awesome to be a part of. We've found a lot of success and hopefully even more success leading into nationals.
"I genuinely really like the people I'm around, which makes everything a lot easier and a lot more fun."
It's the people that push Hawkins and Sullivan to improve every day, as they strive for mastery that may never be possible.
While for some, knowing there's always room for improvement is frustrating, that's what keeps Hawkins and Sullivan going.
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