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. The 2025-26 season will mark his 29th with the Crimson.
With Noack on staff, Harvard has won national coed team race championships in 2002, 2003, 2023 and 2025, as well as the 2003 and 2024 national coed fleet race championships. He also helped the Crimson win the women's national fleet racing title in 2005. During his time on staff, Harvard won five straight Leonard M. Fowle Trophies for the top team performance in the six ICSA North American Championships from 2001-05. It marked 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 six national sailor-of-the-year awards, six ICSA singlehanded championships and 88 All-America honors.
Since the inception of the ICSA All-Academic Team in 2006, Noack has been on staff to watch 79 Harvard student-athletes be honored (entering 2024-25) with the award that recognizes those who have distinguished themselves in national and intersectional competition, while maintaining the highest levels of academic standards. Additionally, Noack has seen 35 Crimson earn Academic All-Ivy League honors.
Regionally, Harvard has also won 13 New England titles since Noack began in Cambridge, including seven singlehanded championships and earned four 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.
