Laughs sail in to Richmond

If you thought you saw or heard about the Harvard Sailing Team's visit to campus last Friday night, you're wrong. The real Harvard sailing team was probably out lifting or drinking whiskey or whatever it is that sailing teams do on a Friday night. Those people onstage in the Camp Concert Hall looking cute in polos and argyle are a group of nine actors who only call themselves the Harvard Sailing Team.

They joke about all sorts of things, including rap music and Facebook and Canadians. But have they gone too far by making fun of a group so prestigious as the real Harvard sailing team? In one of the sketches the team read an email Bernhard Novak, assistant coach of the Harvard sailing team, recently sent the group saying something along the lines of: "Who do you think you are? I could sue, you know!" throwing the name Harvard in there a couple of times for emphasis.

The sketch went on to make light of Novak by characterizing him as a bitter man tired of being second best, who carries around dreams of being a Broadway star. Instead he is stuck assisting the coach of a sailing team in Cambridge. The audience played along and seemed to find the whole thing quite amusing.

But we shouldn't be so quick to laugh at Novak. Maybe he was the Harvard sailing team's biggest fan.

Maybe his sailing friends kept quoting its hilarious videos about boys being girls and hipsters being hipsters and he wanted in on the fun, so he Google searched the videos. Maybe he hoped to see that his very own sailing team had produced them! He must have been so proud.

Then he pressed play and saw Jen, Rebecca, Faryn, Katie, Clayton, Adam, Chris, Sara and Billy. The source of such clever humor wasn't his own sailing team at all, but a bunch of mostly New York University grads! Maybe the resulting shock was the real reason for the email.

However, had Novak been on campus Friday night, even he couldn't have stayed angry for long. The group's performance of popular sketches like, "Puppy Pictures" interspersed with fun songs, including one with the refrain, "the world is the best - Google map the world, you can see your house" was lively. The group's chemistry was obvious.

The audience was engaged and more than willing to laugh along and even participate in one of the sketches.

"You can tell when a crowd's distracted," said group member Chris Smith, but Richmond was, "a warm crowd ... a lot of fun."

The event was organized by Joey Greener, who came up with the idea of bringing them to campus last spring when he first became the comedy chair of the Campus Activity Board. He called the event "a huge success," and said CAB is definitely considering having the Harvard Sailing Team back next year. Greener is looking to extend CAB's reputation for bringing musical acts to campus, such as Flo Rida and The White Panda, to comedy acts like the Harvard Sailing Team.

While not officially on tour, the group has visited several colleges, including Skidmore College and Kenyon College. In a conversation following the show, Smith discussed the possibility of new videos and a movie in the long-term future. Looks like this Harvard sailing team isn't sailing away anytime soon.

Contact reporter Rachael Stoltzfoos at rachael.stoltfoos@richmond.edu.