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August 11, 2004 8:15 pm

Sailor dad unknowingly groomed an Olympian

By Bill Sargent

Florida Today

SATELLITE BEACH, Fla. - Bill Haberland never dreamed he was shaping a future Olympian that spring day when he loaded his family aboard a new 21-foot Venture for its first cruise on Lake Michigan. His daughter Nancy was only 8.

It was the launch of a sailing career that would mold Nancy Haberland, who turns 44 on Monday, into one of the premier female sailors in the world. She would claim more than two dozen world and North American championships in a half-dozen different classes, sailing in everything from dinghies to keelboats, in fleet racing to match racing. Her classes included the Sunfish, 505, J24 and Snipe.

Beginning Saturday, she will be sailing a 20-foot sailboat for the United States at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. Haberland is part of the three-woman USA crew on the boat Team Atkins in the Yngling class, one of nine different classes in the Olympics sailing events.

``I'd like to be there,'' said Bill Haberland, 73, of Satellite Beach, Fla. ``But it'll still be one of the proudest moments of my life, knowing Nancy's representing the USA."

``My earliest memories were that one day in the winter in Illinois when my Dad went to the boat show and bought a boat,'' said Nancy, now a varsity offshore sailing coach for the U.S. Naval Academy. ``When we first began sailing, we had to leave the harbor at 5:30 in the morning so no one could see us trying to learn because we were not good.''

But Nancy got better. When she wasn't racing on her own, Haberland often teamed up with her father in fleet and match races.

``She was almost always the skipper, and we argued a lot,'' Bill said. ``We were sailing against world champions one time, and she wanted to go right toward shore, and I wanted to go left. I kept harping about going left, so we did. It cost us the championship. We finished eighth.''

``I definitely suggested that he jump off the boat and swim home when he obviously did not like the decisions I was making around the race course,'' said Nancy, who has a degree in dietetics from Ohio's Miami University.

Haberland, who is known for her aggressive nature and tactical skills, will serve as the tactician for the three-member Team Atkins, which is sponsored by Atkins Nutritionals. She'll join Carol Cronin, the skipper from Rhode Island, and Liz Filter, a crew member from Stevensville, Md.

``(Nancy) is the one up on the fore deck making the decisions,'' her father said. ``She contemplates everything, she checks out the conditions, the position of the other boats, the wind, the currents. ... You have to be thinking about a half-hour ahead.''

This isn't Nancy's first attempt at the Olympics. Between 1990 and '92, she launched an Olympic campaign in the Europe dinghy, a woman's single-handed division, for the Olympics in Barcelona, Spain. Julia Trotman Brady, the woman who won the trials, asked Haberland to be her training partner at Barcelona, and Brady went on to win a bronze medal.

``I got to experience a bit of those games,'' Haberland said. ``It also made me always want to try again. ... I feel like my dad worked so hard to give me every opportunity to get better at sailing when I was young and he never discouraged me.

``I feel my being at the Olympics is not only a victory in itself for me, but it is for him too.''

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