TEMPE, Ariz. — This year, on the first weekend in March, a team of college students towed a fleet of sailboats about an hour north of Tempe to race on 10,000 acres of freshwater in their school’s second annual regatta, the aptly-named Cactus Cup.

Situated on Lake Pleasant and surrounded by towering saguaros and desert rock, Cactus Cup is Arizona State University (ASU)’s own entry into a divisional sailing race schedule dominated almost entirely by West Coast schools. It is, in fact, the shortest distance the team will travel this year to compete in a conference regatta.

On a more normal weekend, members of Sailing at ASU will drive — and even tow their own boats — hundreds of miles to race against other teams in their conference, where they stand out as the state’s only collegiate sailing squad among 20 others from California, Oregon, Washington and Hawaii.

But unlike the coastlines they usually compete along, a typical practice occurs in the heart of Tempe, on a man-made lake that sits along the freeway, continuously enclosed by luxury apartments and trendy food chains.

It’s a location far from ideal, as towering glass buildings often block any chance of significant wind and summer temperatures can peak high enough to melt boat-dolly tires. Yet there is a silver lining. Most collegiate sailors travel miles to their coastal practice locations. ASU members? They can just walk.

Collegiate sailing teams attend Arizona State University’s second-annual collegiate regatta, Cactus Cup, on March 1, 2025, at Lake Pleasant, Arizona. (*Courtesy of Emma Croteau*)

I meet Erin Welker, the team’s President, one week before the Cactus Cup. She walks around a pile of sailboats at Tempe Marina, inspecting them closely. The team currently has about 10 functional boats, many of which just underwent repairs. Welker tilts one up and checks the tape along its hull. Pulling it out of the gate, she rigs its sails and pushes it toward the ramp that leads to Tempe Town Lake.

A Washington native and rower for six years prior, Welker grew up on the water with some sailing experience, but never at a competitive level. That changed after joining the team, where regattas help members get real race experience under their belts.

Across the lake, the practice course is being set in preparation for next weekend’s Cactus Cup — the passion project of the team’s former president, Sadie Hoberman, which got its start just last year through her advocacy.

Hoberman knew how quickly a collegiate team could go defunct, and she couldn’t let that happen to Sailing at ASU.

Breaking into an Exclusive Sport

Sailing has long been a sport defined by exclusivity and expense, but the team’s affordable dues are a way “to pass on a knowledge of a sport that traditionally has really high barriers to entry,” Hoberman said.

A brief and basic sailing education can cost upwards of $500 to over $1,200 in fees. Aidan Boylan, a self-dubbed team coach, regards the program as a steal. At only $125 a semester, its members can learn to sail and race at a level most people, including Boylan, have paid thousands of dollars to achieve.

Veja Zaprauskis, a freshman on the team, also praises the club for providing pathways for women and minorities to experience a sport that has historically been white and male-dominated.

A 2022 survey from the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association, which governs U.S. collegiate sailing teams, found 82% of athletes and 85% of coaches were white.

“Sailing at ASU is really good about being inclusive to anyone who wants to try it and put their foot in the door,” Zaprauskis said.

The team has also built strong rapport with the Arizona Yacht Club (AYC), whose unique structure supports young sailors rarely seen in other states. Boylan believes yacht clubs tend to be a “rich, old guys club,” where new members are about as infrequent as their boat usage. Most clubs operate out of shared bays that can create a sense of territorialism and stagnation.

AYC is different in that it operates out of public lakes instead of a private marina or clubhouse. “This forces the emphasis to be on sailing,” Boylan said.

Whereas in more coveted locales a sailing community is ensured, this isn’t the case in the desert.

AYC enhances the state’s potential to provide more accessible sailing opportunities to a younger generation — the key to saving what Boylan classifies as a dying sport.

The team also doesn’t receive much financial support from ASU. Its enduring bond with AYC has become invaluable for fundraising and friendship, particularly in founding the Cactus Cup. Hoberman’s proudest accomplishment, the desert regatta is a way of cementing the team’s permanence.

No Longer A ‘Boys Club’

After Welker recognized its lack of female board members, she ran for president and helped found the team’s women’s fleet, which blossomed into an opportunity for women sailors to attend even more regattas.

“It’s something so special because you’re competing against some of the best women sailors in the country,” Welker said. “It’s such a safe community.”

Traditionally, women are often confined to the crew position of a boat, pulling in the sails, as the guy, or skipper, dictates the path to steer — Welker hopes to secure more women in that navigator role.

Teaching them how to skip, she said, empowers them to “get out on the water in a self-sufficient capacity” — something vital to enhancing their confidence and presence in the sport. The women of AYC also play a vital role in this development, Welker said.

AYC got its start in 1958, when founder Ruth Beals began selling sailboats out of a dusty desert lot. They’ve come a long way since, and with their support and the advocacy of those like Welker, the women’s sailing community in Arizona continues to take root in unexpected places.

An Addictive Feeling

Back at Tempe Town Lake, Boylan helps other members get on the water. Practically born on a Minnesota sailboat, he came to ASU in large part because of the school’s team.

Joining directly post-Covid meant he was one of the few active members at the time. Over the years, he’s fostered and witnessed the team’s growing infrastructure firsthand.

Despite working as an unpaid volunteer coach, you can often find him at one of the team’s weekly on-land meetings, giving an impassioned speech on racing strategy and the ins-and-outs of a sport I’d rarely regarded as a sport at all.

A self-proclaimed obsessive, Boylan can easily walk you through a million different and uniquely complex strategies for how to improve the team and teach its members to sail. His methods seek to redesign and challenge years of sailing standards.

Learning to sail with no breeze? Forget the wheel, he’s reinventing the boat — and his biggest reason for doing so lies in that crucial element of sport and competition.

I’d had a similar start to sailing as Boylan — if you swap his Minnesota lakes for Wisconsin ones and my frequency over the course of a few summers to his lifelong dedication.

I can remember, with the slight enhancement of childhood nostalgia, the thrill of what I suppose could be considered an extremely amateurish attempt at a roll tack — where one uses their whole body to tack the boat as they roll or lean to one side to quickly shift the direction of the vessel and its sails.

Growing up in a hockey family, I understood the passion and borderline obsession that defines so many athletes, yet in my mind sailing never came close to broaching that level. I’d always regarded it as I’d experienced it — a summer camp activity that only evoked as much significance and thrill as a childhood hobby.

Boylan tore that idea apart. For him, the sport-defining element of competition is one of sailing’s greatest draws.

When Boylan realized this was a mutual feeling among many of his teammates, he harnessed that. In those post-Covid years, it occurred to him that one of the main reasons the team struggled was because of difficulty racing.

Helping people secure even small victories from the start became a huge motivator for the team’s growth and current success. The team expanded from five race weekends in a school year to 15, competing in 24 regattas this past season — including its own Cactus Cup.

The Value of Community

Zaprauskis quickly felt the club’s strong sense of solidarity. A dual citizen of America and Lithuania who moved from Boston, she has struggled with Arizona’s lack of a Lithuanian community, which was more readily available to her in the Northeast.

“My community isn’t in Arizona,” Zaprauskis said. “I was looking for a new one, and that’s what I’m looking for in sailing.”

For her, the team is akin to a large friend group. Even with its various leadership roles and hierarchies, everyone treats each other as equals, Zaprauskis said. “No one’s by themselves for long.”

The community has become a stepping-stone for Zaprauskis’ personal growth, where such an environment has helped her foster new coping methods for stress and anxiety.

“I think just learning how to deal with it,” Zaprauskis said, “[is] what I take from others around me — if people show their support, I want to show it back when they need it.”

Abigail Harrison — a senior, also from out of state — was originally an online student. She arrived knowing no one, but that changed when she joined Sailing at ASU. Like Zaprauskis, she sees the team’s sense of camaraderie as one of its most valuable traits.

“The club is so welcome and inviting,” Harrison said. “People want to support you here.”

She tears up at the thought of leaving soon. “My hope when I had moved here was that I would get some friends but — I couldn’t have fathomed it,” she said. “Never did I think I would have found a group that I connected with so strongly, that I would be so sad to leave.”

At its core, Sailing at ASU can become a part of one’s identity beyond just a club.

Chasing Greatness

In the months I’ve spent with the team, it’s clear the many facets Sailing at ASU holds. I’ve seen it as an opportunity for members to discover a host of shared experiences as they learn, compete, develop friendships, and belong. Each possesses that common thread of meaning.

Boylan calls it “chasing greatness.” When people say they want to be an astronaut or a writer, what they really mean is they want to lead an exceptional life. Obviously not everyone’s going to be an astronaut, he said, but we’re all searching for that meaning, that little thing we can be great at, that pushes us forward. There’s not always a clear path for that, but he thinks the sailing team can be that calling.

“I’ve seen people — who have been transformed by the team,” Boylan tells me. “It really gave them that missing piece of their identity. That's what I think is incredible about the team. Sailing has long been the source of my identity, and that's long been my drive. So, why not share that with other people?”

As he shares this with me, I believe him. It’s something you see at the team’s meetings and practices, as members gather around and buzz with excitement, discussing the next regatta they hope to attend, or the skills they nailed (or failed) at the last one.

It’s what makes them spend their entire weekend out on a reservoir, eating sandwiches out of plastic bags on pontoon boats and using a floating latrine, as they try to master that one elusive tack or chase more time with a favorite crew member.

A story Bob Naylor, the Senior Staff Commodore for AYC, told me comes to mind. After Cactus Cup wrapped up a second year of success, he got a call that some boats had been left behind amid rising water levels. Despite the exhaustion of the weekend, the team rallied together to save them from being swallowed up by Lake Pleasant.

Then, Arizona acted playfully out of character when it started to pour. A cold, early March rain that soaked the sky and drenched the sailors. “They’re going to hate this,” Naylor thought. But the team took it in stride, laughing and enjoying the moment together regardless.

No matter what or when it is, the team’s greatest meaning is found in its endless opportunity and experience.

Performed in a constantly changing element where no two variables can ever be repeated, sailing is a continuous process of learning and discovery — whether of the boat, the skill of the sport, the water coursing under the hull, the teammate sitting next to you, or even your own capabilities.

“It gives you this feeling like there is no limit to what you can learn or what your potential is — there’s always something else, that next thing,” Boylan said. “It’s almost existential.”