The Phillipian Andover Boys Swimming and Diving has won twelve NEPSAC Championships since 2007, nine of which were under the leadership of Head Coach David Fox (pictured furthest on the right)
Pictured from left to right, Theo Randall ’23, Chris Xia ’23, Oliver Feng ’25, and Marcel Liu ’23 took first place in the 200-Medley Relay with a time of 1:30.44.
Daniel Seong ’25 broke the Lower class record in the 100-Meter Breaststroke at the NEPSAC Championship with a time of 56.45.
Andover Boys Swimming and Diving claimed its 12th New England Preparatory School Athletic Council (NEPSAC) Division I Championship title in 16 years on March 5 to cap off its undefeated season. The team won by a margin of 152 points at its home pool over ten other teams.
According to Co-Captain Trey Wolfe ’23, the team entered with the intention to push itself to the limit. In addition to the team’s new class records, Co-Captain Theo Randall ’23, Co-Captain Chris Xia ’23, and Marcel Liu ’23 all broke school records in their respective events.
“Our goal is never to win, our goal is just to do the best we possibly can, just control what we can and leave the rest up to fate. I think we did a really good job at that. Everyone swam as hard as they could, everybody was dropping time, and in the end that worked out for us,” said Wolfe.
David Porto ’26 explained how the team prepared for the NEPSAC Championship during its practices.
“For practices, we did less intensive sets every time as we approached the actual tournament. For mindset, Theo, the [Co-Captain], was really encouraging us to swim well and [our] coach was hyping people up and making sure we were all excited to swim fast,” said Porto.
Two weeks prior to the NEPSAC Championship, the team had claimed the Eastern Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championship (Easterns) title in Pennsylvania. Alongside the win at Easterns, the team’s undefeated dual-meet record served as a confidence-booster going into NEPSAC weekend, according to Albert Tsao ’25.
“I think our strength was probably our experience. We had swam a lot of meets by then and we did a lot of sprints in practice, so I just felt that all of us were pretty ready. We were pretty nervous but we were ready for what was to come,” said Tsao.
Since the championship included preliminary and final swim rounds, it was crucial for the team to progress as many swimmers into the finals in order to maximize team points, according to Wolfe. Ultimately, the team placed in the top three in every swimming event, leading to the dramatic victory.
Wolfe said, “I would say I think we did a really good job on the first day which [was] preliminaries. Our coach always tells us that you can’t win a meet in prelims because you can’t score points but you can lose because if you can’t get people in finals you won’t be able to score points on Sunday. My point is we did a really good job in preliminaries getting people in the finals and I think in almost every event we had three people which is almost the max you can have. We did a good job there with our depth.”
