Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association
| Abbreviation | ICSA |
|---|---|
| Legal status | Association |
| Headquarters |
Norfolk, Virginia United States |
|
Region served
|
United States and Canada |
|
President
|
Mitchell Brindley |
| Website | ICSA official website |
The Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) is a volunteer organization that serves as the governing authority for all sailing competition at colleges and universities throughout the United States and in some parts of Canada.
College sailing has been in continuous existence for over a century and the first college sailing club was founded in 1881 when the Yale Corinthian Yacht Club was established in Branford, Connecticut. Organized intercollegiate racing began in 1928 between just a few schools and has since grown to include 218 member programs (150 regular, 19 provisional, 49 associate), though not all continue to compete actively and consistently.
This section outlines the history of North American inter-collegiate fleet racing; the history of inter-collegiate team racing is covered in Team Racing.
In the US the first college sailing club to be formed was the Yale Corinthian Yacht Club in 1881 - three years before the founding of the Oxford University Yacht Club in the UK in 1884 (followed by Cambridge in 1893 and Harvard in 1894). Sailing also started at other universities such as Brown, but the emphasis was very much on big yacht cruising and many of these (US) collegiate clubs faded during the First World War. Harvard and Yale held a sailing event in 1911, but this was a long-distance 'cruise' rather than a fleet or team race, and only one Yale yacht attended the event! What is now the US Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) was established in 1930 as the ICYRA, although inter-collegiate fleet racing had started in Eight-Metres in 1928 for what is now the McMillan Cup. The first inter-collegiate dinghy fleet event, the Boston Dinghy Club Challenge Cup, took place with 34 entrants in 1930 (in parallel with the founding of the ICYA), and there was a dinghy event between Princeton and Dartmouth in 1934, but details of its format are not recorded.
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