Boys’ Varsity Swim Sweeps Against NMH
Seniors and co-captains Joaquin Riojas and Harry Saunders rush neck and neck into the wall in the 100 yard butterfly. They finish 1st and 2nd with Saunders barely out-touching Riojas. The two teammates and friends taunt each other with a smile after glancing at the scoreboard, basking in the glow of their teammates’ cheers from the side of the pool. Exeter has swept another event, and the rest of the meet’s races will end in a similarly dominant fashion for Big Red.
On Saturday, the boys’ varsity swim team traveled to face the Northfield Mount Hermon School (NMH). Fresh off a win against Choate last weekend, the team was eager and prepared to take on NMH. After this lively meet, the boys got to put another win on their impressive season record, now 6-1.
Going into the meet, Big Red was ambitious and hungry to win. Senior Will Soltas described the team’s mindset, saying, “We were confident in our ability to win.” Lower Carsten Bressel agreed and described the team as being “hopeful.”
In preparation for the meet, the team kept up their high intensity practices. “We trained hard right through the entire week,” Soltas said. In addition, the team’s head coach, Don Mills, was absent. Assistant coach Avery Reavill took over coaching on Friday, heading into the meet. “Reavill let us have it with fast lengthy sets, getting in a good challenge swim before NMH,” Bressel said, commenting on the unique coaching situation.
The meet was full of memorable swims with Exeter touching first and second in almost every event. Upper Peter Tuchler crushed the 200 yard individual medley field, finishing ten seconds ahead of his second place teammate, upper Jeremy Xu. Tuchler came back later in the meet to pick up another win in the 100 yard breastroke. Lower Andrew Benson took first in his 100 yard backstroke, racing into the wall 20 seconds ahead of NMH’s top competitor.
An unforgettable swim from this meet was the men’s 200 yard freestyle. Senior Evan Stanton boldy swam the entire 200 yards of the race butterfly instead of typical freestyle. “He was the only person in the 200 free to swim the 200 butterfly instead,” lower Andrew Sun explained. He expressed the team’s excitement and said, “Everyone was super hyped as we cheered him on.” Evan ended up touching last, but he powered through the painful event and his grit inspired his teammates. Senior Avery Giles described his race as being “unreal.”
The meet brought the opportunity for the boys to try out different events, similar to Evan’s 200 yard butterfly. “[We] used the meet as an opportunity to explore our scope of events that we were capable of,” lower Yulian Ye said. Many different swimmers swam events they don’t normally swim in meets, which allowed them to drop time as Soltas explained.
Looking towards the end of the season, the team is training in anticipation of their dual meet against Andover as well as the Interscholastic Championship. Ye added, “The boys are working hard and we’re all very excited for the upcoming Andover meet. We know that they’re gonna be good competition, but we’ll be ready to [beat them] when the time comes.”