Bern Noack, who has coached collegiate sailing for more than 20 years, has been part of Harvard Sailing since 1997, serving as an assistant coach before being elevated to associate head coach in the fall of 2022. During his career, he has coached more than 60 All-Americans and five College Sailor-of-the-Year recipients.
With Noack on staff, Harvard has won national team race championships in 2002 and 2003, as well as the 2003 national coed championship and the women's national title in 2005. His teams won five straight Leonard M. Fowle Trophies for the top team performance in the six ICSA North American Championships from 2001-2005. It is the second-longest Fowle Trophy run in history, trailing only Navy's streak of seven Fowle Trophies from 1977 to 1983.
Individually, Noack has helped Harvard sailors and crew members to four national sailor-of-the-year awards, five ICSA singlehanded championships and 68 All-America honors.
Since the inception of the ICSA All-Academic Team in 2006, Harvard student-athletes have been honored 57 times with the award that recognizes those who have distinguished themselves in national and intersectional competition, while maintaining the highest levels of academic standards. Additionally, 31 members of his teams have earned Academic All-Ivy League honors.
Regionally, Harvard has also won eight New England titles since Noack began in Cambridge, including six singlehanded championships and earned three sailor-of-year honors.
Noack was the singlehanded coach for the U.S. Sailing Elite Youth Development team and U-18 and U-23 U.S. sailing teams from 2007-09.
Prior to joining the Harvard staff, Noack worked as the sailing coach at Boston University from 1996-97. He helped the Terriers win their second Dinghy Championship and finish second in team racing. He also served as the varsity dinghy coach at the United States Coast Guard Academy from 1990-95, the Noyes Coaching Fellow at Yale University in the fall of 1989 and the U.S. Naval Academy assistant coach in the spring of 1989.
Noack’s post-collegiate racing career spans more than two decades and includes three first-place finishes at the Hyannis Regatta in 1996, 1998 and 1999. He also placed in the top-five in the team racing at the U.S. Championships three times (1990-4th, 1993-3rd and 1994-5th). In 1996, he earned second-place in the North American and Atlantic Coast regattas. Noack was eighth in Standard Masters at the 2011 Laser Master Worlds.
Noack received his B.A. in physics from Yale in 1988, where he was a varsity A division skipper as a senior.
