Andover: 114; Choate: 70
Boys Swimming and Diving teams earned a resounding victory against Choate, marked by strong performances individually and across the team. Captain Daniel Seong ’25 and Brian Lee ’25 broke Choate pool records, Seong for the 100-Meter Breaststroke, swimming 1:05.17, and Lee for the 100-Meter Butterfly swimming 57.27.
According to Seong, one of the highlights of the meet was a thrilling 100-Yard Backstroke race, where three different Andover swimmers all finished within 0.2 seconds of each other.
“In the 100[-Yard] Backstroke event, the top three were Woori Lee, Oliver Stabach, and Oliver Feng, all on our Andover team, and they all came within 0.2 seconds of each other to round out the first three places. It was a great race to watch. It was awesome to see how three people who always push each other during practice have such a great race, and they were able to push each other during a meet context as well, outside of practice, and finish with great times, considering that it’s only mid-season,” said Seong.
Another critical race came during the 200-meter Freestyle Relay, taking place near the midpoint of the meet. Seong noted that the race came down to the last second, but Ben Zhou ’25’s last second push managed to aid the team in finishing on top.
“During the 200[-Yard] Freestyle relay, it was a really close race with the Choate team. It came down to the last couple of meters, but Ben Zhou ’25, our anchor, had a strong finish to take the win for our team, and that was halfway through the meet. With that win, the atmosphere was really good too, because everyone was cheering through their race. That helped set the tone for the final events for me,” said Seong.
David Frahm ’26 described the diving team’s training regimen of weekly dives. He noted that the theme of the meet was inward dives, a skill he had been consistently working on building up to the competition.
“Each week focuses on a different kind of dive. This meet was inward, so I really focused on keeping my dives inward instead of pushing them out. The further out from the board you go, the more points that get deducted, so you want to stay pretty close to the board.” said Frahm.
Cale Barker ’28 pointed to team spirit as one of the main contributors to the success at the meet. He noted an increase in camaraderie and cheering among the swimmers, which helped keep the energy high.
“We were strong at swimming really fast, and the boys came to cheer for each other more and give each other some motivation to keep going. The atmosphere was very loud with a lot of energy and excitement,” said Barker.
In the days before the meet, Coach David Fox stressed maintaining focus and intentionality during practices. Seong emphasized how these practices helped directly improve performance in both practice and races.
Seong said, “Coach Fox talked to us before the meet about staying focused during practices, being intentional with everything that you’re doing and practice because that’s what’s going to translate into your races and in the context of schoolwork and the other thousand things that you have to juggle. It might be easy to lose sight of that, but I feel that after Coach Fox helped remind us that, everyone was able to have a couple of really good practices.”
He continued, “Applying those things of really focusing on the intention of helping everyone out or helping each other on the team during practice. We had some good practices that helped to lead to a good performance at the show.”
Boys Swimming and Diving will compete against St. John’s Prep at home this Friday.
