Andover Girls Swimming & Diving achieved a total of 25 individual season best times, resulting in a 116-70 win against Deerfield last Saturday. The successful meet raised Andover’s standing season record to 4-1-0. According to Co-Captain Allyson Ty ’18, Deerfield is known to have a strong swimming program. This fact motivated the girls to train more intensely than they did for previous meets.
“We were very excited going into the meet. Deerfield is a strong team with some fast swimmers. Knowing this, we were eager to swim our best against them,” said Ty. Hailey Wadell ’21 added, “This meet’s preparation was a little different from previous meets. We had a bye week before Deerfield, so we did higher-intensity workouts than we would if we had a meet that weekend. I think this training really helped us, as we got to focus on what we each individually needed to work on. We specifically did a lot of time and pace work, and I think that paid off in the end.” Abby Ryan ’21 said, “We all had two strong weeks of practice up until Saturday, so all of us knew that we were capable of competing with Deerfield, but we definitely exceeded our expectations… Our confidence translated into dominance throughout the entire meet.”
Andover made a dominant statement in the first event of the meet, taking both first and second places in the 200-Yard Medley Relay. Andover’s relay team that finished first with a time of 1:52.29 minutes comprised of Emma Donchi ’18, Ty, Yifei Wu ’18, and Angelreana Choi ’19. Andover continued to secure victories, winning three consecutive matches in the events leading up to diving, with Co-Captain Jess Gearan ’18 finishing at 1:58.97 minutes in the 200-Yard Freestyle, Elizabeth Tran ’19 at 2:11.31 in the 200-Yard Individual Medley, and Ty at 25.07 seconds in the 50-Yard Freestyle. Wadell said, “One of the main highlights of the meet was that before [diving], almost all of us had gone season bests. Our work in previous weeks payed off, and this showed through our times. We had a wicked strong start to the meet, which helped us finish as strongly as we did.”
Andover gained even greater momentum towards the end of the meet, achieving firstplace victories in the 100-Yard Backstroke, 500-Yard Freestyle, and 100-Yard Breaststroke with times of 59.27 seconds by Ty, 5:20.84 minutes by Graeleigh Jones ’21, and 1:10.59 minutes by Emily Warren ’21, respectively.
To cap off the meet, Andover’s team of Gearan, Ty, Tran, and Jones clinched a close win in the 400-Yard Freestyle Relay with a time of 3:43.93 minutes.
In two weeks, Andover Girls Swimming and Diving will face off against Hopkins. According to Ty, the team will continue to train tirelessly and use the weekend to prepare for the difficult meet.
Ty said, “We don’t have a meet this coming weekend, so we’re planning to have practices to prepare for our next meet against Hopkins. We plan to keep training hard in the pool and during dry land workouts to build up our endurance and improve our stroke techniques.”
