The ISA National Schools Team Racing Championships will take place on April 21/22 in the Royal St George Yacht Club, Dun Laoghaire, Co Dublin in Firefly dinghies. Previously contested by Munster and Leinster schools only, for the first time, 2007 will see all four provinces represented.

“Teams from the earlier qualifying events will be joined by invited Schools from Connaught and Ulster,” explained Sean Craig, ISA Racing Manager. “This year the event will truly go national and the competition will be testing for all teams, but particularly the schools new to the format”.

Likely pre-event favourites must be Schull Community College who currently has sailors touring five US schools in the Boston area for team and fleet racing. This team recently qualified to represent Ireland at Under-21 level at the ISAF Team Racing World Championships (Gandia, Spain 23rd-29th Sept 2007), beating Third-Level College teams in the process.

Another Munster team, Kinsale Community School hopes to benefit from the experience of Aiden McLaverty; a member of the ISA Youth Academy, Aiden recently came second at the ISA Laser Radial Youth National Championship in Cork last week. The Leinster Schools will keep the competition extremely close, following their qualifier event earlier in the year when the top four teams all tied on race wins. In the end Waterford’s Newtown School claimed the Championship title on the tiebreak.

The Leinster teams will also include some very accomplished young sailors, with Annalise Murphy, ISA Youth Academy member, and Ed Butler, 2nd in the 420 class at the ISA Youth Nationals, both sailing for the High School. Also fresh from the ISA Youth Nationals is Wesley sailor, Alysson Rumball (3rd in the 420 class) and Ben Scallan (4th in the Laser Radials class) who will sail for Newtown School.

Rather untried in team-racing are the invited schools from Connaught and Ulster but are likely to feature some of our finest young sailors from classes like the Laser, Topper and Mirror.