Why Only in the Northeast?

Thanks for the defense, QT. I'll get out there, but like everyone's been saying, there are so many schools in the East, that I can often get a whole bunch of teams and events at once, like the road trip I'm about to embark on. I'll get out to the West Coast at some point when I can hit a few schools and/or regattas at once.

A) why are people taking cuts at bears fans B) the best teams end up in the north east because talent follows talent. BC Georgetown C of C St. Mary's all have great resources but more importantly they have very talented coaches and sailors and thats why top junior sailors are drawn there to hone their skills and when year in and year out there's great talent there's going to be more consistent success. That being said Stanford has a solid freshman class and there are a bunch of great cali sailors that should be in college in the next few years and that trend might change if they land on the west coast.

i sail in boston, and i've been taken to task by plenty of west coast teams, on those days they were better. period. end of story.
who cares about legacy - it's about who can beat you right now. people start screaming about legacy when they dont believe that they're as good. the conversation usuially goes like this. USC Sailor: "Dude, we beat you every time we've raced since our Freshmen year." NEISA Sailor: "Well my team won a hundred national titles since 1902."
i've noticed bad sailors always start the Neisa vs. the world argument. it's time to get over who has been better since the beginning of time. Like Chicago Bears Fans... just get over it. The best district houses the best teams. The best teams prove their the best at each regatta - not in yesterdays trophy case. The best teams get together at nationals and fight it out. where's the argument?
As for the money issue - you're in college. you sail. you have money. you have no excuse.

I like Tom C’s response. He sums it up pretty well. I should remind C. Love that unless he’s talking about salt water, there’s plenty of water in the Midwest (it’s the land of lakes, some are called Great Lakes, not great puddles) and at 31 teams, it’s one of the ICSA’s bigger conferences.
You can’t deny that money matters but it’s too easy, and incorrect, to call that the heart of the issue. You could give a conference like the Northwest a boatload of money and it wouldn’t guarantee any of the top high school sailors would choose a college up there. Not unless the ICSA allowed college scholarships to less developed districts like NWICSA and SEISA only. Yeah right. You could give a team from a less developed conference an unlimited travel budget for a decade and it wouldn’t necessarily help them become any better, still finishing in the back of the big intersectional fleet. Good money could lure stronger coaches to those conferences and that would help development so teams may become, as Tom says, “well established” over time.
Most high school sailors choose to go places where there’s a history of success and a lot of those places have great institutes of higher learning. So it’s an easy decision to pick the stronger conferences. Clearly a secondary consideration must be how nice the sailing venues and conditions are, otherwise everyone would be flocking to Hawaii, California, the Gulf of Mexico, etc. I’ve heard a few west coast coaches complain that it’s not fair that high school sailors out there get trained very well and then ditch the area colleges for those of the Northeast.
I’m bias. I think good coaching goes a long way regardless of the size of the team or the conference. Though it is a big gap to bridge between some conferences, it puts you on the right track. Of course a good coach isn’t just about X’s and O’s and running effective practices but about recruiting members (within the college as well as future freshman classes), alumni relations, fundraising, and all the little things that turn a team into something called “well established.” A lot of that work can be done without throwing big money at it and if done well, more money comes in through fundraising and alumni support. That said, I don’t mean to knock any existing coach, just merely point out that less developed conferences tend to have more teams without coaches, or with part-time coaches or volunteer coaches. That hinders those teams, and in turn, those conferences.
What can the ICSA do about it presently? Well they can’t hire a coach for every team. I suggest holding as many sailing clinics as you can in the conferences in question and work on getting a large turnout. That shows you care and you are trying to make a difference, and it will give more sailors a bigger taste of what’s going on in the East. I’d also develop “sister” regattas where a stronger team from the east or wherever is matched up with a less developed team for a regatta. One team in A division, another team in B and you are scored together. If you want a good score, you better help out your sister. Of course the ICSA would have to throw some money at those ideas to pull it off.
Lastly, Conference Championships do matter and are won in any conference with pride. It’s a chance to sail against like-teams with similar geographical disadvantages (or advantages). I commend the sailors in every conference for their commitment to the sport and the challenges that they face within each unique conference. Take the Northwest for instance; they must be tough as nails with a true love of the sport to endure the colder temperatures, the long drives, and the typically smaller fleets. They’re winners in their own right.

-Mutley

First, the whole premise of "NEISA vs. the world" is BS, except maybe in flip cup...sometimes. Stanford is not the best West Coast team due to their budget, they're the best because right now they have the most talent. Yes budgets help, but most schools in the east don't go out and start buying gear for their team members. The programs on the east coast have also been around longer, and there are also many east coast universities that are located close to water that again, have programs that have been in place for some time.

And how dare include schools in MAISA and SAISA as "northeast." :P Maybe a topic for "East Coast Schools" would be more fitting. It would be foolish to think that only one conference was dominant.

Not true...

Yea, stanford is the only team thats ranked from the west coast cause they have the biggest budget on the west coast.