Barrows enters new chapter in sailing career

The college sailing season is over and Thomas Barrows has been decorated with a laundry list of individual awards. Several more may still be on the way.

Yet the St. Thomas native never really wants to talk about himself.

When asked how or why he was named the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association’s 2010 National Sailor of the Year, Barrows talked about his team’s consistent sailing as the reason why. During Yale University’s commencement weekend in May, Barrows won the most prestigious honor given to a senior male student-athlete — the Neely Mallory Award — and once again, he pointed to the sailors around him.

“It was hard, but at the same time, most people on the team were good about doing the right thing,” the 22-year-old Barrows said last week. “That made my job much easier.”

The Antilles School graduate was named recently to the ICSA All-American Sailing Team for a fourth straight year and is looking forward to representing the U.S. Virgin Islands at the Central American and Caribbean Games in July. After that, a possible second stint with the USVI Olympic team — he finished 21st out of 43 competing nations at the 2008 Beijing Olympics — is on the horizon.

So one thing is certain: College sailing may be over, but Barrow’s sailing career is in full swing.

“He really likes what he’s doing,” said Yale University sailing coach Zack Leonard, who first met Barrows at the St. Thomas Yacht Club when he was still in high school. “For some people, you have to push them. But because Thomas loves what he does, he always does more than expected. That’s pretty rare.”

After taking aim at a gold medal at the 2012 London Olympic Games, a number of professional sailing options await Barrows. He could tour on bigger boats, coach or enter the sail-making industry just to name a few.

“The opportunities will be there and he will make good money,” Leonard said. “Sailing will turn into his career because he’s very smart and he’ll have plenty of different options to pursue.”

It was the opportunities presented to Barrows at a young age that are responsible for his elite sailing status today. Along with fellow All-American college sailors Cy Thompson and Taylor Canfield, Barrows helped start the sailing program at Antilles and the group won two national championships during his senior year.

The trio competed against one another on a regular basis during college. But back when they were prep sailors, their parents wanted to push the scope of junior sailing on St. Thomas and as a result, Leonard entered their lives.

“I never had coached kids that age before,” Leonard said. “But honestly, all those kids shared the same traits. I think they each had a sense of how lucky they were and the opportunities they had. They took advantage of those opportunities because of their extreme talents. It was a great group.”

Canfield, a junior at Boston College, led his team to its first ICSA National Championship title on June 3 in Madison, Wis. Thompson, a junior at Roger Williams University, played a critical role during his team’s 12th place finish. Barrows, a two-year team captain, led Yale to fifth place.

Despite the fierce competition between the St. Thomians, they’ve always remained friends.

“When we were young, we’d sail over to Christmas Cove and race back to see who could reach the beach first,” said Barrows, who was named The Virgin Islands Daily News 2006 Athlete of the Year. “We’re all still very close. We ended up going to colleges in the same district and we competed against each other almost every weekend.”

The college sailing season is long and demanding, especially with the academic demands that come with attending an Ivy League school. Barrows said his team practiced four times a week and regularly competed in two-day weekend regattas. Unlike other college sports, they also compete during the fall and spring seasons.

With Barrows as skipper, leading the way, Yale went on a dominant run to start off the fall season.

“We won a lot of regattas in the fall and that’s hard to do in college sailing,” Leonard said. “It’s hard to win every time. In the fall, we won every event until the second-to-last weekend. It was like eight or nine races in a row that stretched across a two-month period.”

Barrows believed his team’s run in the fall set the stage for a strong spring.

“In sailing, it’s hard to stay consistent,” said Barrows, who also won the TRUX Sailing Race at the U.S. Naval Academy, the largest inter-sectional regatta of the spring season. “We’re challenged by different conditions all the time. Maintaining consistency is the name of the game.”

In another attempt to shy away from the spotlight, Barrows also commended his B-position skipper on a strong season, which helped Yale overall. In college sailing, there are two divisions and a team’s total is the combination of each team’s score.

Barrows won the B Division at Nationals as a freshman, which put his name in the headlines. Three years later, Barrows became the first sailor in school history to take home the Neely Mallory Award.

“Obviously, it was special because a sailor has never won it,” said Barrows, who graduated from Yale in May with a B.A. in sociology. “But personally, I think I won it because our team was ranked in the Top 3 for the past year. Being able to come in my freshman year, have a big impact and continue to perform at the high level also helped.”

It’s that consistency that Barrows hopes will take him through the CAC Games and into the Olympics in two years. He will compete on a Laser, a one-person boat that measures 13 feet, 10 inches long, with a 4-foot, 7-inch beam, a 2-foot, 7-inch draft and a 7.06-square meter sail area.

At the CAC Games in Puerto Rico, he will have to hold up a strong Virgin Islands tradition. Anthony Kotoun, a 2008 Olympic aspirant in the 49er, won the Lasers in 2002 and Thompson took home the gold in 2006. This time, Guatemalan Juan Maegli, a former Olympian, poses the biggest threat. Barrows sailed against him in college and is looking forward to the challenge.

“I guess the Virgin Islands has a tradition with the Lasers and I want to continue it,” he said.

— Contact sports reporter Aaron Gray at 774-8772 ext. 352 or e-mail agray@dailynews.vi.

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