Every other Wednesday, head coach Tim Baffoe and assistant coach Bob Szyman ’65 gather Mount Carmel’s sailors after school for practice, except this time it’s from the comfort of the classroom.

Dry-land classroom sessions are prerequisite practices in order to join Caravan Sailing’s spring season. In Room 214 sailors tie knots, roll sails, practice techniques, review parts of the sail and boat, and more as a means of preparing for the spring season and possibly the team’s first ever competitions.

“In education we look at three domains: the cognitive domain, the effective domain, and the psychomotor domain. What we’re doing here is building up the cognitive domain,” Coach Szyman said. “One of the reasons we’re doing it is if we can get all that in their heads we can spend more time in the water in the spring instead of teaching that stuff.”

The spring season officially starts at the end of April, but through classroom sessions, members will have learned many of the more tedious terminology and basic skills  before the season even starts.

“Even the veterans will have to review how to actually rig the boats,” Coach Baffoe said. “Sailors are going to have to reacclimate themselves if they’re returning sailors, and also acclimate themselves if they’re new to rigging a boat.”

This learning is getting done early in the hopes of preparing the team for joining their first-ever regattas, which are sailing competitions consisting of multiple races among several teams. Caravan Sailing will compete in the Midwest Interscholastic Sailing Association’s (MISSA) league.

“There are a bunch of schools in the area, along with Northwest Indiana and Southern Wisconsin, that are a part of MISSA,” Coach Baffoe said. “Those are schools that we would potentially compete against.”

The current sailors on the team are freshmen Timmy Carter, David Medina, Matthew Smith, Vincent Thomas, and William Kinsey and sophomores Wyatt Knight, Gavin McGovern, Calixto Rios, and junior Kyron Wright. Of the team, Timmy Carter, David Medina, Wyatt Knight, and Kyron Wright are considered race-ready because of their more significant prior experience on the water.

“Over the summer I did a lot of racing with Defiance [a sailing team in Chicago],” Carter said. “As a part of the crew, they invited me to race from Chicago to Mackinac [an island in northern Michigan], which is about 300 miles.”

In addition to Carter’s experience, Medina has sailed for five years on various types of boats, Knight has been part of a Michigan City Yacht Club’s summer sailing camp for five years, and Kyron sailed starting just before his freshman year.

There is no confirmed date for the team’s first regatta, but the sailing team plans on signing-up to complete when available. At the same time, the program also wants to offer the option for participants to choose simply to pleasure sail.

“It is my belief everyone should sail, and not everyone likes to compete,” Coach Szyman said. “Racing is competitive, and some people just aren’t cut out for that, but I would hate for them to never sail because they had a bad experience racing.”

Rios is new to sailing, and one of the reasons he feels classroom sessions are a good place to start is because they introduce new guys to all the right people.

“It feels like a good way to introduce a newcomer because it includes them in a group of guys who might feel the same way,” Rios said. “It also challenges everyone, allowing the teamwork and connection that is needed in order to succeed in that common goal that everyone wants.”

In addition to new sailors that might join the team, classroom sessions are also effective at reacclimating members of the team who can be more experienced.

“I’d say it’s pretty good for review so you don’t forget the stuff that you learned in the fall,” Carter said. “When you go into the spring you can remember all the stuff so that we’re not not wasting time.”

As a whole the sailing team has high hopes for their upcoming spring season.

“I just want to get going, Coach Szyman said. “I want to get in the water, and I want to see the kids do that. I’m really looking forward to it.”