Boys Swim and Dive was able to kick off the season by easily defeating St. Johns as well as edge out Suffield with help from Samuel Lee ’24 stepping in for an injury during the middle of the meet. The team’s record stands at an undefeated 2-0.
According to Theo Randall ’23, the Suffield meet was down to the wire and many individuals had fantastic races that allowed Andover to get the advantage and eventually, the win.
Randall said, “Chris Xia ’23, he’s an Upper, he was always the star of our meets, he’s a breaststroker, and he also swam the 200 freestyle, so he was pretty dominant in his races today, I think he won everything. Andrew Kim, also an Upper, had a great swim in the 100 fly against Suffield.”
Trey Wolfe ’23 notes that the win would not have been possible without the persistence of every swimmer on the team. Wolfe also believes that [the] back-to-back day style of meets allowed for many swimmers to get familiar with their races and produce the best possible results.
“I will say that we all did a good job as a whole, everybody got after their races, a lot of people swam the same stuff both days, so everybody learned on day 1, and was able to apply that to day 2, so that’s one of the advantages of having one of those back-to-back weekends because it’s tough physically, but we were able to learn a bit from day 1 and apply it,” said Wolfe.
Wolfe believes the selfless and closely bound nature of the group partnered with the supportive and team-centric atmosphere it fosters makes Boys Swim and Dive a better team in the pool and better friends outside of it.
Wolfe said, “We talk about personal bests and doing the best we can individually, but the whole reason that we want to go fast individually is [that] it’s all scoring points for the team, and anything good that someone does by themself helps us all out. I will say I think we’ve grown really close, especially in the past couple [of] weeks, doing exercises over quarantine and getting back in the pool, everyone’s really excited to be back together. We definitely consider ourselves a family, by doing things like eating team dinner together, stuff like that, we’ve really grown close.”
According to Christopher Xia ’23, there were some inexperienced swimmers who took part in the first two meets. Xia notes that gaining more experience and having everyone focused on bettering themselves individually will let the team thrive as the season continues.
Xia said, “As a whole, I think the team all agrees that despite each meet being a competition, we need to focus more on ourselves and the things we can control, rather than the opposing team. Putting attention on getting everyone to their individual goals, and the rest will come by itself.”
Boys Swim and Dive seeks to remain undefeated as it will take on Deerfield away.
