Girls Swimming & Diving swept the competition last Friday as it faced off against Loomis Chaffee. The team went on to defeat Loomis 112-69, giving the team its first win of the season. The team’s record now stands at 1-1.
After the previous week’s close defeat to Choate, the team had a whole week to train and hard on sets and implemented a new type of drill, according to Abby Ryan ’21.
“This week we’ve been doing a lot more sets based on stroke, so people are breaking up into distance and sprint freestyle and then all the different strokes. We also added in a swimming tradition on Wednesday which was tough but provided a good base for how we thought we were going to do this weekend,” said Ryan.
The team made sure to focus on the little things and make the most out of each practice, according to Emily Warren ’21.
“After we were defeated by Choate, we felt pretty disheartened considering how close we were to winning. However, this made us more determined to make better use of each practice to win the next meet. We also focused more on tiny details that can help win a race when it comes down to milliseconds,” said Warren.
According to Jackie Rossi ’20, Captain Macey Mannion ’19 and Hailey Wadell ’21 distinguished themselves, earning times of 5:37.20 minutes and 5:40.30 minutes respectively in the 500-Meter Freestyle.
Rossi said, “In terms of standout performances, our distance swimmers did really well… They completely controlled the pool, keeping a strong and steady rhythm for the whole race, and even lapped some girls from Loomis.”
With the new team, Andover’s swimmers have worked on getting to know to each other better to improve the result of the meet.
Hannah Ono ’22 said, “Relays are a lot about knowing the timing of when you start and knowing the people and how they swim. Knowing their goals is also important so you can support them.”
“We’re very supportive of one another, at the meets, all of us get behind the blocks and cheer for each other,” Ashley Vensel ’22.
The team looks forward to train again with a full team and to improve on working more closely as a team.
“We were missing some key people this week, as they were at a different meet, like Graeleigh Jones [’21], Mary Kate Turk [’21], Amy Xia [’19]. [We missed] Grace Hitchcock [’20] to injury. Having those people back after the break will be really crucial for us. Even though we really excelled this weekend, we still a lot of area to improve and especially with this break to train,” says Ryan.
In the Girls 1-Meter Diving, Reese Pelletier ’20, Claire Davis ’20, and Ora Cullen ’19 swept the podium, claiming the top three spots with scores with 276.40, 227.90, and 210.00, respectively. According to Davis, back dive was a required category for the meet.
Pelletier said, “Especially preparing for this meet, we made sure to put in extra time practicing our back categories. Also we made sure that our entries were very clean and we were very particular about our technique and detail in our diving, and this was something we definitely worked on in practice.”
Girls Swimming & Diving will next compete against Peddie after break.
