Young sailors in search of great competition, quality coaching and a fun time on and off the water will find a special experience at a U.S. Sailing Junior Olympic Festival. Junior Olympic sailing events share one common goal: provide youth sailors with opportunities to learn. Enjoy the excitement of competitive sailing and develop skills for lifelong involvement in the sport.
Many of these Junior Olympic festivals focus on skill building with clinics conducted by intercollegiate coaches, all American College racers and even Olympic medalists. “Well I think the Junior Olympic program is a great opportunity for local sailors to race at a high level in their area without having to travel really far, and to have the championship level regatta,” says John Pearse.
This program also offers special opportunities for event hosts to broaden their curriculum for program directors, coaches, and instructors while expanding the expertise of local race managers and volunteers. “The idea is to interact with the coaches of the of the individual Club to maybe give them some ideas and some different ways to do things,” says Kevin Reali.
“The kids work with different coaches and then there’s the master coaches also helping run the drills and working with the kids and I think it’s been a really great experience and I think the sailors and the coaches have been benefiting a lot from it,” -Tommy Galster. “Yeah, it’s pretty good. I think it’s helping a lot… the racing,” -Aili
An impressive list of the best sailors in the world launched their passion for sailing at a Junior Olympic Festival. It’s exciting to get to work with these kids. Hopefully, we get a few of them who kind of get hooked on competitive racing and decide to take to the next level; and you know hopefully years and years down the road a few of these kids will be sailing in the actual Olympics. That would be the goal.
“We’ve done racing, we’ve done Follow the Leader, we’ve done sail trail starts, we’ve done so much stuff that’s very fun,” -Ian.
Although racing and skill development is a big focus at Junior Olympic festivals, participating sailors have a blast just making new friends being out on the water and learning something new. The value of having events like this is really bringing kids together. This is us telling you to find the Junior Olympic Sailing festival near you
