Oliver Stabach ’26 swims breaststroke in the pool.
Boys Swimming & Diving scored three resounding victories as they continue to prepare for the Easterns Interscholastic Swimming and Diving Championships (Easterns) in mid-February. A win in a dual meet against St. John’s Prep and a tri-meet against Loomis Chaffee (Loomis) and Suffield Academy marked four straight triumphs for the team this season. However, the main focus is replicating last year’s success at Easterns and beyond.
Eric Chang ’28 gave an overview of both meets, noting the lopsided score lines and the energizing atmosphere at the pool.
Chang said, “[On] Friday, we went up against St. John’s. We won that meet 128 to 57. I’d say, overall, it was a really good meet. The atmosphere there was great. Everyone was cheering for teammates behind their lanes. I’d say it was really good. Same thing on Saturday against Suffield. We won [the] Suffield [meet], 109 to 65. It was a tri-meet, so we hosted Suffield and Loomis. We won against Suffield 109 to 65, and we won against Loomis 120 to 57. I’d say the atmosphere was like the St. John’s meet, really positive, really motivating, and overall, it was a good meet.”
Jay Wei ’27 agreed with Chang and mentioned how the team approached the event. He added that, at Easterns, there aren’t many opportunities to rest, so the team used the back-to-back meets to train for those kinds of situations.
“The meet was on a Friday night. We all did super well. We treated the weekend like a lactate set, so the first day we tried to mimic what we were going to do at Easterns… Basically, not having a lot of rest when you’re doing very high-intensity sprinting. We’re going super fast, not getting much rest, and then going right into another event,” said Wei.
Chang highlighted Oliver Feng ’25 for his great race in the 400-Meter Freestyle relay. He swam a tight final lap as the anchor but out-touched a Suffield swimmer to win the event.
“During the Saturday meet, Oliver Feng stood out the most, in my opinion. In the 400-[Meter] Freestyle relay, he was anchoring, which is our fastest relay. He was racing this Suffield guy really fast, and they were neck and neck, but in the last 50 [meters], he really set the pace, and he out-touched that Suffield guy by half a second. We were all watching that race, we were all excited in anticipation. He was a standout swimmer,” said Chang.
Wei also spoke about how Captain Daniel Seong ’25’s dynamic leadership helped to fire up the team. When Wei was nervous before his race, Seong reassured and calmed him down, which caused them to win big.
Wei said, “Daniel Seong does a really good job of encouraging the team, and he does a really good job of igniting the spark within all of us. At those team meetings, he tells us to all lock in, and obviously, Daniel is always cheering on his fellow teammates. Before the relay, I was nervous, but he said, ‘Yo, Jay, you got this, bro,’ and then we crushed the other team.”
Saturday’s meet against Loomis and Suffield was a tri-meet, an unfamiliar format for Boys Swimming & Diving. Haoyu Zhang ’27 explained how tri-meets function and how they are scored.
Zhang said, “There were five schools, but there were two separate meets. So one meet was Andover, Loomis, and Suffield, and the other was St. Paul’s and Austin Prep… It’s point accumulation, and whoever accumulates the most points will be the winning team. We do these types of meets at least once a year. Obviously, the big meets are like this because the big meets are many schools competing together. During the regular season, most of our meets will be dual meets between two schools.”
Boys Swimming & Diving will race Deerfield at home on February 1.
