Athletic Hall of Fame
June 7, 2009 – Jon Pinckney ’84 became the fifth inductee into Brewster Academy’s Athletic Hall of Fame on June 7. Although the Hall of Fame is in the Smith Center for Athletics and Wellness, the induction ceremony took place at the Pinckney Boathouse, a fitting venue given Pinckney’s continued passion and commitment to the sport of sailing.Before formally inducting Pinckney and presenting him with a duplicate of a plaque that will hang in the Hall of Fame, former Headmaster David M. Smith talked about Pinckney and his accomplishments.
A southern California native, Pinckney began sailing at a young age. When he was seven and his brother Mike was nine they ventured across the bay from their Newport Beach home in what Smith described as a bright yellow, decrepit rowboat for sailing lessons at a local yacht club. “Sometimes they had two oars, sometimes one – at times none, but they made do and provided the neighbors with many chuckles,” Smith said. As Pinckney’s sailing knowledge and skills grew, he began entering races at clubs from San Diego to San Francisco, sailing Sabots (sailing dinghies). In 1981, at age 15, Pinckney won the National Sabot Championships. That same year, he competed successfully against sailors in their early twenties in the Laser Nationals. The following year he qualified for the Youth Championships in Coconut Grove, Florida, and in 1982, he won the Lido 14 National Championship. Around this time, his parents decided their son could benefit from a college preparatory school experience – in New England, where his mom had deep roots. Smith explained that “[Elizabeth Pinckney] carried the stipulation that the school for her son not only had to have the right social and academic environment, it must also have a sailing program.” With New Hampshire’s largest lake lapping at the edge of campus, Brewster Academy fit the bill. The southern California sailor packed his bags and headed east to complete his junior and senior years of high school while bringing his passion for sailing to the East Coast. While perennial powerhouse sailing schools like Tabor Academy and St. George’s School had open ocean year-round, Brewster’s home course was frozen for nearly four months of the year. The competition had been on the water for weeks or months while Brewster sailors were out chipping away at the ice in early spring in attempts to open up more water for practice.
In Pinckney’s senior year, Brewster received an invitation to participate in the New England Championship, hosted that year by Tabor Academy. According to Smith, it was an understatement to say that the Brewster team received a few snickers as they arrived at Tabor and prepared to sail the course. “And then Jon and Ray [Lambert as crew] went out and wiped out the snickers, changed the facial expressions to astonishment, and they brought home the New England Championship.” For Brewster, it was the first New England Championship sailing title; no other Brewster team has since captured it. “Our sailing team had records I had never dreamed of before,” Smith said. It was a strong finish to Pinckney’s nearly two years at Brewster. Upon graduation, he chose to return to southern California for college and joined the sailing team at the University of California, Irvine. While at UC Irvine, he was an All-American Honorable Mention as a freshman, a three-time collegiate All-American, and won numerous national sailing competitions. When Pinckney graduated from UC Irvine, he did not need to go far to find success – he became the head coach of the university’s sailing team. In his first year as coach, his sailors won the National Dinghy Championships. More recently he has been sailing Melges 24s and has placed second in the World Championship for that class four times during the past eight years. A week after Pinckney was on the Brewster campus for his Hall of Fame induction, he won the Melges 24 U.S. National Championship (amateur class) in San Francisco. Overall his team placed fourth. In concluding his remarks about Pinckney, Smith reminded the audience members: “The essence of the mission of Brewster Academy is to make the greatest difference possible in the lives of the young people entrusted to us.
Every student comes with their own combination of extraordinary gifts – some, but not most, yet to be discovered. It is the school’s great honor and obligation to help them to make those discoveries and develop in all the ways that will enable them to express the full measure of those talents throughout their lives.”He went on to say, “And then there are those that have discovered and gone a long way in the development of a certain talent before their arrival but need to broaden out in all ways – to reach the point where they can say as Jon did to [an] L.A. Times reporter, “I matured [at Brewster], and I came into college with all the tools and all kinds of experience.”Upon accepting his plaque, Pinckney reflected on how his Brewster experience set him up for success but admitted that his passion was not for classroom learning. He discovered the key components for success by being a member of both the Brewster basketball and sailing teams, he said. Both team sports taught him that hard work, dedication, confidence, attitude, and teamwork were the ingredients for achieving his goals, he added.And sailing is all about teamwork – whether working with the crew or maneuvering on the course to help better position a teammate’s boat. When Pinckney is not racing sailboats or working as a financial planner, he enjoys sailing his Laymen 12 with his wife Gale – also a sailor – and four-year-old son Morgan.
