In a nail-biting meet filled with excitement and controversy, Andover Boys Swimming tied Deerfield 93-93 after a Deerfield relay team was disqualified in the final race of the day. The tie brought Andover’s league record to 2-1-1.
Deerfield, a perennial powerhouse, has proved to be one of Andover’s toughest opponents this season. In addition to competing against a challenging team, Andover had many swimmers who were unable to compete due to injury and illness. The team, however, was undaunted and the healthy swimmers compensated for the shortage of other teammates.
In the final event, the 400-Yard Freestyle Relay, Andover led by two points. Head Coach Jacques Hugon decided to split Andover’s fastest swimmers into two separate teams to ensure consistent second and third place victories, instead of a single first-place win.
The tactic failed when Deerfield clinched first and third place, seemingly winning the meet. The officials, however, reviewed the race and spotted a false start on Deerfield’s third place team, leading to its disqualification. Andover then received second and third place by default, securing the tie.
“We were the obvious underdogs, so Coach [Hugon] told us to just go out and have fun. We were not as strong as we could have been due to many illnesses but we were still determined. I personally like being the underdog and use it to motivate me and to push myself to the limit.” said returner Christian Alberga ’17 in an email to The Phillipian.
The meet started off with a narrow loss for Andover in the 200-Yard Medley, as the team of Darren Ty ’16, Aaron Teo ’15, Alex Li ’15 and Chris Li ’15 missed out on first place by only 0.26 seconds with a time of 1:39.55.
Marcello Rossi ’16 and Richard Zhong ’17 then took second and third respectively in the 200-Yard Freestyle. At this point, Andover had not claimed first place in any events, and trailed 29-17. Alberga then turned the meet around with Andover’s first and last individual win of the day in the 50-Yard Freestyle with a time of 22.44.
Jack Belluche ’16 swept the diving event, continuing his season-long undefeated streak with an impressive score of 249. The victory clinched crucial points for Andover and kept the score tight at 43-39.
Andover racked up a few more second and third place wins as the meet went on, but its finest performance came in the 200-Yard Freestyle Relay. The team grabbed both first and third place, as Alex Li, Ty, Rossi, and Alberga won in 1:30.64 and Nick Faulkner ’16, Sarp Orgul ’16, Felix Liu ’15 and Michael Najem ’16 won in 1:37.08.
Commenting on the rest of the season and preparation for the New England Preparatory School Athletic Conference (NEPSAC) tournament, Najem wrote in an email to The Phillipian, “Right now we have about two more weeks of intense, hard work in practice before the last two dual meets against Hopkins and Exeter to close out our regular season. Then, we are going to start tapering (resting and gradually decreasing workload and practice) in preparation for New England’s.”
Andover will welcome Hopkins this weekend to continue its journey to the championship.
