WIND, WAVES, AND WILLPOWER

WHERE THERE’S A WILL, there’s a way to sail.

Will Howard’s journey with Lake Forest Sailing (LFS) began in 2000 when his family relocated to Lake Forest. His introduction to sailing came through LFS’s learn-to-sail program, where he quickly developed a love for the sport. Not much has changed about the venue since then, the roofless training center (aka picturesque Lake Michigan) still serving as its A-one asset. Under the mentorship of Hunter Ratliff, then-director of LFS, Howard honed his sailing and racing skills, laying the foundation for a storied youth racing career.

“Lake Forest Sailing was my playground and it’s been tied to my identity for most of my life,” says the 31-year-old Howard, who, as an eight-year-old, moved from Connecticut to Lake Forest with his brothers and parents, John and Julia. “Hunter was my coach. He was my boss when I taught sailing during the summers. He was always prepared and professional and composed. Any question I’d ask him, he’d know the answer to it. He cared more than anyone I had met.”

The student must have asked great questions and received spot-on answers. The youngest sailor in the field at the 2007 Laser (an adult racing class boat) World Championships in the Netherlands was none other than Howard, then a 14-year-old who’d been only months removed from having figured out how to navigate Lake Forest High’s hallways.

Howard wrestled for three years at LFHS before opting to swim and play water polo in his senior year. The summer before his senior year, Howard and his father visited colleges in Connecticut. An academy—the United States Coast Guard, in New London—got added midtrip to the itinerary. Will Howard met the USCGA sailing coach, liked what he heard, and completed a mini-Coast Guard boot camp in the summer of 2009.

The next summer, after graduating from LFHS, Howard left in June to complete the rigorous cadet boot camp. Howard sailed for the USCGA sailing team in his freshman and sophomore years and underwent rigorous training aboard tall ships atop international waters and operational cutters in the Atlantic. He fondly recalls the excitement of climbing the masts to change sails—while enduring the force and fickleness of twenty-foot waves—in the Artic Circle, in the middle of the night. The values Howard absorbed at USCGA turned out to be indelible ones.

“I will always have accountability, attention to detail, and discipline that I gained at USCGA,” Howard says.

Howard’s new stop was the University of Miami in Florida, where he earned a business degree.

“The U.S. Coast Guard and Miami … talk about polar opposites in college experiences,” says Howard.

The Lake Forest Sailing alumnus returned to Lake Forest in 2015 and found serious work at his former playground. Since then, he has served at the helm as the Sailing Director. “My coaches and my time spent on Lake Michigan shaped me growing up. I get to see and enable the same for my sailors now.”

One of LFS’ top sailors, Mary Carter, embodies this sentiment that Howard shares.

“I was the only girl (in an LFS intro racing program 10 years ago),” recalls Carter, now a Lake Forest High School senior and forever grateful for the unwavering guidance of Howard and the full Lake Forest Sailing Experience. “And I was not good at sailing, not good at all. Probably the worst in the group.”

Regardless of age or gender, Howard viewed Mary Carter as Mary Carter, budding sailor. There’s not a hint of gender bias, after all, in the Lake Forest Sailing mission: “Build Little Champions.”

“When I was young and afraid, he was supportive, encouraging, and positive, and he knew how to connect with each sailor,” says Carter, the daughter and granddaughter of sailors. “Will still does all those things. He cares about kids as sailors and as people.

“You could say his passion for sailing,” she adds, “rubbed off on me.”

Did. It. Ever.

Carter and her Lake Forest Sailing mates earned the No. 1 ranking in the 180-team Midwestern Intercollegiate Sailing Association in each of the last three years. She and her skipper, LFHS classmate and Brown University-bound sailor Charlie Gish, finished sixth overall at last summer’s Interscholastic Sailing Association Mallory Doublehanded National Championships on the Toms River near Ocean County, New Jersey.

“To Will,” Carter says, “we’re athletes. You’re not going to find a better coach. So much of Lake Forest Sailing’s continuous success all over the country stems from his enthusiasm for the sport and the time he devotes to making sure we’re all prepared for anything.”

Effective this fall, Carter becomes an NCAA Division I athlete on Tulane University’s sailing team.

“I wake up in the morning thinking, ‘What can I do today to build little champions?’” says Howard, a Mettawa resident and a U.S. Sailing Level 3 coach. “My job is filled with rewarding moments. One is watching my sailors make the right decisions on the racecourse. But my absolute favorite is seeing and hearing a kid (Carter, for one) that I taught, when they were eight or nine, later teach sailing to kids who are eight or nine. That’s so ridiculously rewarding.

“I run our spring championship season like a boot camp for our high school sailors,” he adds. “Some join me for early-morning sprints up the hill (near Lake Forest Sailing’s Lake Michigan base). I’ve told them, ‘Meet me here at 5:15 a.m., and let’s kill the hill together.’ And we don’t sail in protected areas while training, like most sailing programs in the country do. We train in all kinds of conditions—sometimes in oceanic conditions when it’s 40 degrees and snowing sideways. Weather in Illinois toughens our sailors, makes them resilient.”

The training grounds on Lake Michigan play a pivotal role in shaping tough sailors and resilient individuals. The lake’s conditions, from unpredictable waves to challenging weather, serve as the perfect training arena, instilling in sailors the virtues of adaptability and perseverance. Howard emphasizes the romantic relationship between himself and Lake Michigan, a bond that he strives to pass on to his sailors, fostering a love for the lake and a deep appreciation for its teachings.

Lake Forest Sailing’s Summer Sailing School is extraordinarily popular. A total of 368 youngsters, ages five to 14, enrolled in the Summer Sailing School in More than 150 had to be waitlisted. The Summer Sailing School serves as a pipeline for the youth racing programs that compete year-round. Well before the kids get into racing, they are learning confidence and an affinity for being on the lake.

“Watching 5- and 6-year-olds become the captains of their own bathtub-like vessels is not only adorable but inspiring,” Howard says. “It can be life-changing for a young kid to gain confidence and acuity through learning to sail on their own on Lake Michigan.”

Howard credits the success of Summer Sailing School (which often fills up in minutes) to the summer coaches.

“All of our staff members,” he notes, “are successful racers who grew up in the program themselves. You can’t pay for that kind of passion in an employee. I call it ‘the continuity of success’.”

When not running the teams and the program, Howard has leveled up his own racing career thanks to Jim Murray’s Callisto Racing Team. Murray, a Lake Bluff resident, showed Howard a picture of a PAC 52 race boat at the LFS Spring banquet in 2018. The size of Howard’s eyes doubled, maybe even tripled, instantly.

“Callisto Racing showed me a whole new world of racing,” says Howard, who got hooked and somehow still finds time to race on J/70 and J/109 circuits, as well as the occasional ocean race on Callisto Racing’s Pac 52.

It also introduced Howard to all different types of high-performance sailboat racing and allows him to rub shoulders with some of the most storied and accomplished sailors in the world, all while keeping his own racing skills sharp.

Howard returned that favor—to his LFS charges. Howard garnered a donation of a J70 race boat that would become the Youth Race Team “GromSquad,” Lake Forest Sailing’s coolest new watercraft.

LFS Sailors have learned a ton on the J/70 and raced it at invitationals in the U.S, including one near St. Petersburg, Florida, where Carter, Gish and their teammates Tristan McDonald and Keegan Chatburn took runner-up honors at the National High School Keelboat Championship last December.

Howard’s mission is to give youth the unique opportunities he had growing up racing sailboats.

“I work hard to be sure that we are learning from the best, meeting the best, and becoming the best, always,” he says.

Such an approach continues to impress and thrill a slew of LFS stars and their parents.

“We’re so lucky to have a role model like Will in our community,” says Lake Forest’s Julie Gish, Charlie’s mother. “Will creates an inclusive environment for sailors of all ages and abilities and he deserves credit for helping my son find something he loves to do. Will inspires, builds confidence. Young sailors want to be around him and do the work necessary to be a part of something that’s the envy of youth sailing programs in the United States.

“Will brings in outstanding national and international sailors and coaches to speak to his sailors,” she continues. “How great is that? And we also have the benefit of training on Lake Michigan, which can be beautiful one day and unpredictable the next.”

Despite operating out of a modest shed, LFS commands national recognition and stands as a testament to athleticism, intelligence, and a winning mindset. Howard’s coaching philosophy goes beyond sailing skills; it’s about building character, instilling discipline, and nurturing champions on and off the water. LFS sailors, under Howard’s mentorship, travel nationwide for regattas, competing with a ferocity borne out of their training on Lake Michigan. The list of recent accomplishments is too lengthy to list here.

The future of Lake Forest Sailing is bright, with ambitious goals on the horizon. Expanding the Green Fleet, fundraising efforts, and creating a healthy J/70 fleet are top priorities. The Green Fleet initiative aims to introduce young children to competitive sailing, laying the foundation for future champions. Fundraising plays a crucial role in acquiring equipment and supporting the program’s growth. Notable achievements, such as acquiring a fleet of 21 Club 420s through fundraising, underscore the community’s dedication to fostering sailing excellence.

Picture this: It’s Graduation Day at Lake Forest High School. Or pick another school, any school, that a Lake Forest Sailing sailor had attended. Speeches are made.

Caps fly due north. Gowns flow. Parents applaud.

So does a certain proud Lake Forest Sailing director.

Except Howard knows he will see his seniors again next week, when they’ll resume their collaborative efforts to build the next batch of little champions.

Lake Forest Sailing is a Lake Forest Parks & Recreation program. In addition to Youth Race Teams, it runs Community Sailing and Lake Access. For more information about LFS, visit lfparksandrec.com.