Last weekend, both Co-Captains of Andover Girls Swimming & Diving earned first place titles in Andover’s meet against Westford Academy. Co-Captain Macey Mannion ’19 stole a first place win in the 500-Yard Freestyle with a time of 5:30:07, and Co-Captain Elizabeth Tran ’19 won the 200-Yard Individual Medley with a time of 2:15:12. Despite these successes, Andover ultimately fell short of Westford with a final score of 81-100. The team’s record now stands at 1-3.
Despite the overall loss, Andover collected two additional first place titles: one in the 400-Yard Freestyle Relay with a time of 3:49:51, swum by Tran, Graeleigh Jones ’21, Mary Kate Turk ’22, and Hailey Wadell ’21 and one in the 100-Yard Breastroke, swam by Alexa DiCenso ’21 with a time of 1:12:67.
Head Coach Paul Murphy ’84 emphasized that Andover’s performances in relays this season have demonstrated the team’s depth of skill.
Coach Murphy said, “We have relays A, B, and C. A comes in usually much further ahead than B and then much further ahead than C. This whole year, all three relays… have almost been exactly the same.”
Reese Pelletier ’20 received a second place finish for Andover with 251.50 points in the diving portion of the competition.
According to Pelletier, Andover’s divers are working hard to take more risks and push themselves to expand their repertoire.
Pelletier said, “I think we are doing well at improving our lifts. A lot of [the] time it’s easy to just repeat the same dives every week and not try to go for harder dives because it’s obviously scarier to do more difficult dives, but I think [Head Coach Belinda Canavan] has really been encouraging us to do that. And we have been working with each other as a team and encouraging each other as teammates.”
According to Abby Ryan ’21 and Tran, Andover continues to work diligently in practice in preparation for its upcoming meets.
Ryan said, “I think we are working pretty hard in practice now, so hopefully that will pay off soon. And distance people are doing really well, and breaststroke is a pretty strong field right now.”
Tran said, “For our next meet, we’re definitely going to be focusing on getting our technique down and our walls. For Deerfield, there’s probably going to be a focus on our relays. Since they count for a lot of points, it’s really important to make sure that our turns and starts are quick.”
Looking forward, Andover seeks to balance hard work and assiduity in practice with proper rest and recovery in effort to optimize its performance in competitions such as the Eastern Championships and the New England Championships, according to Coach Murphy.
“We just have to work very hard in January and February and then you have to start tapering and resting a little bit, and then doing big detail work closer to the championships,” said Coach Murphy.
Andover Swimming & Diving will host Deerfield at 1:00 p.m. this Saturday.
