Team Strategy Becomes Critical For Lake Forest High School Sailors

Scouts head to nationals with a team mentality firmly in place.

Sailing is not a sport often evoking images of team playbooks and selfless defensive maneuvers.  When the Lake Forest High School sailing team competes in the national team championships Saturday and Sunday (May 21-22) in Norfolk, Va., that is exactly the Scouts' strategy.  “It’s a combination of using plays according to the rules to control your opponent and build up your own team,” coach Hunter Ratliff said. “We select plays from our playbook and execute according to the rules.”  The Scouts are one of 12 teams from around the country competing for the national team championship. They qualified by winning the Midwest title three weeks ago in Minnesota.  A Scout squad of three boats with one sailor as skipper and another as crew will …

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Sailing Program Builds Champions On and Off the Water

World Class Racing Team Emerges at Lake Forest High School.

When then Lake Forest Mayor Ron Waud asked local maritime enthusiast Norman Olson in 1999 to turn a  recreational sailing program into a world class racing team, who knew one of the nation's premier teams would emerge. Olson did.  He also knew it would build champions both on and off the water. While Lake Forest High School has become one of the nation's powerhouses and the "team to beat" in the Midwest, according to coach Hunter Ratliff, the program operated by Lake Forest Parks and Recreation also trains and coaches the teams for Lake Forest Academy and Woodlands Academy.  Both are regionally competitive squads.            Olson, who developed a program in Clearwater, Fla., which produced two Olympic silver medalists,  led an effort to …

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Lake Forest-Lake Bluff Briefly

Lake Forest Boosts Sailing Coach's Olympic Bid

Ratliff seeks support in his quest for Olympic 2012 gold.

Lake Forest Parks & Recreation Department will host a rally of support for its sailing coach, Hunter Ratliff, who is making his Olympic bid for the 2012 Games in the 470 class one design sailboat category.  The rally will be held at 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 29, at the Gorton Community Center, 400 E. Illinois Road, in Lake Forest. Under Ratliff tuteledge, the Lake Forest team has achieved a record success as the No. 1 sailing team out of 27 schools from five states in the Midwest. Ratliff hopes to turn this success into financial assistance to aid his quest for Olympic gold. Admission is $10 for adults and $5 for children under 12. There will be a donation booth for those that care to make a tax deductible donation  or, one can be mailed to the …

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