August 29, 2005

Andrew Campbell is a junior, and a key member of the 2005 Co-ed Sailing team. After taking some time off last year to train for the 2004 Olympics he is back on the Hilltop and talking about his unique sailing experiences.

Interview by Simon Nurse, Sports Information Intern

SN: How did your interest in sailing develop?

AC: My personal interest developed because of my family. Both of my parents were involved in sailing. That's how they met, doing competitive sailing when they were both in their 20s. I grew up around the sport and my dad did it professionally for a number of years and so I grew up in that kind of atmosphere. They fostered that interest. They didn't push me to do it, but their support really made it possible.

SN: So it's a family dynamic. Do you have siblings that also sail?

AC: I have a younger brother who's actually pretty active at my high school, the Bishop School in California. So he's sailing, and he does it less than I do, but I think he enjoys it. My family in general does a lot of sailing together just for fun.

SN: What influenced your decision to attend Georgetown, on the complete opposite coast from San Diego, California?

AC: The East Coast sailing scene is much better. The West Coast is a lot more disorganized and there's certainly more schools on the East Coast that do it actively. Plus, Georgetown's got a hell of a program as far as size of the team and what not. East Coast sailing is just a different level.

SN: How has your experience at Georgetown been?

AC: It's been great. I guess I've only been here two and a half years but the sailing's been great, we've had some great opportunities to really make ourselves look pretty good and we got second as a team at Nationals last year which was pretty exciting for us. It's a lot better in a lot of ways than I thought it was going to be. You know, the size of the team is big compared to a lot of other schools and I was a little hesitant at first about how that was all going to work out, but it's been great. We have 20, 25 people who go to practice every day and that's really outstanding for a university club.

SN: Have you started thinking of what you would like to do after leaving Georgetown?

AC: Um, yeah. The Olympics are in 2008, so I figure I'll graduate hopefully in 2006 next spring and that leaves me 2 years of full-time training to try to do that. I took a semester off the fall of my sophomore year to try to do that for the 2004 Games and it didn't quite work out, but I think I'll get a better shot at 2008. So that's my ultimate immediate goal when I get out of school and we'll see after that.

SN: So you took a semester off and trained in Europe?

AC: Yeah I spent a few weeks in Croatia, I spent six weeks in Spain and then I came back and spent about six weeks in Houston before I went to Charleston. I spent a lot of time sailing, a lot of time training.

SN: Do you feel like that training improved your sailing abilities or was it just a new experience?

AC: Well it was a new experience, but in retrospect it did help me develop a lot of skills I didn't have before. My physical prowess especially increased over that amount of time. Every day in the water, I mean you can't really beat that kind of situation. You're bound to improve. Obviously it's a little different, it's much more of a sprint in college, it's only 15 minutes long and the Olympic level races are an hour and so it's a little different body mentality. But it definitely improved all my sailing all together so I was really glad to take that time off - it was well spent.

SN: You said you were traveling a lot. Did you get a chance to do any sightseeing?

AC: We did some. I didn't really do a lot of it, probably should have done more to be honest. When we were in the south of Spain and Croatia it was unbelievable, those kinds of places just boggle the mind, like where you actually are. And you come to school, and I have an appreciation for that kind of stuff now. We did manage to get out and see the sights a fair amount. I mean there's not much to see in Houston so we didn't do much of that down there, but when we were in Europe it was definitely a good deal.

SN: Did you have a favorite place that you went?

AC: I spent six weeks in the south of Spain on the Atlantic side. It's an unbelievable, unbelievable place.