Under a crystal sky, Lake Michigan perches next to the city, creating an ideal course for sailors. Nine miles west of the water, Oak Park and River Forest High School has started a Sailing Club. Its members have begun taking the 40-minute drive from 201 N. Scoville Ave. to the Columbia Yacht Club for the 2024-2025 season.
Sailing Club is run by Christine Crabb and David Gullo, an OPRF graduate. In addition to his role leading the sailing club, Gullo is the founder of The Great Lakes Youth Sailing Academy and the winner of Race to Mackinac section 3 in 2018. Crabb is the parent of two OPRF students, junior Tyler Crabb and freshman J.P. Crabb. Both are members of the sailing team.
Sailors take to the water during the fall and spring seasons; both seasons are not required to be on the team. There is a junior varsity and a varsity team. Varsity practices on Mondays, Fridays and Saturdays, while JV practices on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.
“The nice thing is they split the kids in different groupings based on their skill level, so you can be brand new to sailing,” Crabb said. “On the developmental team, they slowly teach you about the parts of the boat and how to sail, then as you are getting more comfortable, they are teaching you how to race.” The cost to join the team is $735 for each season.
Getting the sailing club off the dock hasn’t always had the smoothest waters. “The biggest issue was getting enough kids to sign up. At the varsity level, to do any of the regattas (a sailing race) you have to have two boats to register, so that means you need to have four sailors,” Crabb said. Currently, the club has eight sailors between the varsity and JV levels.
Another obstacle for the club is transportation. The club practices at the Columbia Yacht Club, at 111 N. DuSable Lake Shore Drive, which is in downtown Chicago. As the club isn’t a school-sanctioned team, they have had to rely on the support of friends and family. “We had a great group of parents who organized a carpool spreadsheet, and they all took turns, and we had five JV kids going down, and parents were just driving them back and forth,” said Crabb.
However, the club embraces its newness as an opportunity for growth. For junior sailor Tyler Crabb, the most important thing was “getting the team moving, participating in regattas, showing that we’re a new team and that we are able to sail.”
Each regatta varies, but typically the team competes against neighboring high schools like Lake Forest, New Trier, St. Ignatius and Walter Payton. This year, the OPRF sailors qualified for the Shepherds Championship, which is the second-highest regional regatta to qualify for, just below regionals.
“Sailing is a life skill and a life sport,” Gullo said, and encouraged new sailors to come try it out; no experience is needed. Gullo recommended starting with the sailing classes offered through Base Camp, a summer camp run by the Oak Park Education Foundation, and then through the Columbia and Chicago Yacht Club summer camps. They occur all summer long, for weeks at a time.
The OPRF sailing team invites all interested students to take advantage of Lake Michigan and join them on the lake this spring. Tyler Crabb added, “I am hoping to see the program grow and get bigger and stronger. ”
