I just thought i'd input my 2 cents on the competition at the US Youth Multihull events I attended.
In the events I attended monohull sailors did fairly well. While their boatspeed was usually not as fast as ours they had better boat handling and tactics.
I would emphasize the importance to the kids you are coaching of having good tactics, while I am on my toes in college racing, tacking on headers and etc, I admit I largley ignore them in cats and instead of taking the time to tack I bear off and go for speed. While this is great if everyone is doing the same, I feel competing against monohull sailors who are on their toes ready to tack on every header, you have to pay attention to what they are doing. If they tack up the middle on every header with only slightly less boatspeed than you then you are going to be behind them at the windward mark. Also, fast wire to wire tacks, these monohull kids are used to the fast wire to wire tacks on 420s and I suppose since it is a west coast event, on 29ers and etc.
The clearcut example of this is Anders Straume and Hunter Stunzi at the '01 youth nationals. TJ Tullo is also another good example of this. They were the first on the wire and last off, had the fastest tacks, and played the shifts.
Not to say cat sailors don't play shifts, but no where near as much as monohull sailors.
Good luck to all the youths sailing in this and please realize how lucky you are. I miss racing at a national level on supplied boats and against kids my age, once you age out it is tough to find a similar situation. You really have to thank everyone involved in organizing this... especially Mr. Arthur Stevens and Darline Hobock who have committed soo much to this event.
I'm hoping a cat sailor wins, not a crossover... sorry to all those crossovers but most don't continue on cats! There are exceptions but most are just looking for an easy ticket to the youth worlds.