Smooth sailing

Alex Coolman

NEWPORT BEACH -- Pay a visit to the yacht club that’s home to the

best high school sailing team in the country, and the impression you’ll

get is somewhat more casual than you might expect.

Billy Uniack, the 23-year-old coach of Newport Harbor High School’s

team, is running around trying to field phone calls. A handful of the

girls on the team are lounging in an office in battered chairs. Some of

the boys on the team are off sailing, and one of them is at the dentist,

probably worrying more about molars than mainsails.

But if the vibe is relaxed at the Newport Harbor Yacht Club, the

group’s base of operations, that’s because the team members have already

accomplished everything they possibly can.

Earlier this month, they won the International High School Racing

Championship Regatta in England. Before that, they won the U.S.

Nationals. And before that, they won every other sailing contest they

entered, with the exception of a single second-place finish.

They may not be big on ceremony, but they seem to be doing something

right.

And if you talk to the people on the team -- and the people on the

teams they beat -- the impression you get is that clicking as a group,

rather than sticking to any formal program, is the mysterious ingredient

in Newport Harbor’s formula of success.

“We’re pretty focused,” Uniack said. “We work pretty hard.”

“The whole year, right from the get-go, we totally worked together,”

said Meredith Potter, 16, one of the youngest of the six sailors who

racked up the impressive record of wins.

It wasn’t always this way. In the past, Uniack said, there tended to

be more interpersonal squabbling, whereas an almost eerie harmony

prevails today.

But Jaime Malm, who coached the group between 1992 and 1997, pointed

out that even at its cattiest, the team has always been a tough

competitor. Though it never had quite the extravagant results of this

year, Newport Harbor dominated the water in 1993, 1995 and 1997.

That kind of tradition, Malm said, makes a difference.

“They’ve seen the team winning,” he said. “When [the current members]

were young, they wanted to be Newport Harbor kids and win everything.”

And the school’s rivals are all too aware of the power of those past

victories.

“[Newport Harbor] has a reputation for being good,” said Marc Barra,

coach of the University of San Diego High School’s sailing team, one of

Newport Harbor’s main rivals. “For the kids in that area who are getting

out of junior high and want to sail in high school, it’s like going to a

good college.”

With the weight of that history and those expectations in the

background, it’s not surprising that the casual approach only goes so

far; underneath it is a major streak of competitiveness.

“If they lose,” Uniack noted, “they get really upset.”

But that doesn’t happen very often.