Thank you so much for supporting my trip out to Rochester, New York for the US Youth Match Racing Championship for the Rose Cup. I really appreciate your help in making this experience possible for me. Here is a summary of my experience out east. 
Before the regatta, our team (Morgan Pinckney, Sophia Pearce, Jack Flores and I) had arranged a practice session in Sail Newport, RI. Morgan and Sophia were already in Newport from a prior C420 clinic, and Jack had flown out earlier as well, leaving me as the last one back in California. After flying out to meet everyone, we then met up with our coach for the next two days, Albert Nichols. Albert helped us dial down all our boathandling maneuvers and match racing moves to get us all set for the upcoming regatta.
After our practice days, we then took a flight from Newport to Rochester to meet up with Dave Perry, the coach, as well as the rest of the Rose Cup teams. The first two days of the regatta were more practice days at the venue in the regatta boats, allowing us to become more familiar in the Sonar, which none of us had sailed before. Then came racing. This was most of our first real match race regatta, and it was super cool to finish off the first two round robins seeded in 4th – behind the seasoned Jack Egan, Jeffery Petersen, and David Wood. Unfortunately, when it came down to the quarter finals, we brought it to the final race of a best of 5 series against another more experienced team, led by Owen Lars, but were not able to secure a spot in the semi finals. Thus, we ended up in the race off for 5th place, which we were able to win.
In the end, this regatta was an amazing learning experience for our team and it was super cool to dip our toes into a new aspect of sailing. Although we did not do as well as we had hoped, I cannot wait to apply this experience to future match race regattas and possibly even future Rose Cups! Thank you so much again for making this experience possible for me!