PORTSMOUTH, R.I. (June 9, 2004) – The Olympic Sailing Committee (OSC) of US SAILING, national governing body for the sport, has announced that Mike Kalin (Boston, Mass.) has joined it’s coaching program as the new Laser Youth Development Coach. Kalin will be responsible for creating and coordinating a development program for advanced U.S. youth sailors who concentrate on sailing in the Laser and Laser Radial. He will organize and conduct Advanced Training Camps at select junior championships, including the U.S. Junior Singlehanded Championship (Smythe Trophy) and U.S. Junior Women’s Singlehanded Championship (Leiter Trophy), as well as the qualifying events to determine competitors for the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship. He will also attend the ISAF Youth Sailing World Championship as the Coach/Team Leader. Partial funding for this new position will come from the North American Laser Class.

In addition, Kalin will attend the Laser Radial Youth World Championship as Coach/Team Leader. A sponsorship initiative created and funded by Vanguard Sailboats (Portsmouth, R.I.), not only offsets the expense of having a coach accompany the team, but also provides five selected athletes with a grant to defray their expenses associated with attending the championship.

A 1997 graduate of Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), Kalin worked for several years as a mechanical engineer before mounting a Laser campaign for the 2000 Olympics that subsequently opened the door to a coaching career. For the last four years he has been the Varsity Sailing Coach at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, Mass.).

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