By Xander MacKay-Kao
STAFF WRITER
The girls swim team at Andover High School faced issues with both coed swim teams and transportation throughout the past season.
Normally, the swim teams are divided by gender into seasons, with the girls swimming in the fall and the boys swimming in the winter. However, throughout our local circuit, there are multiple schools that don’t have enough boys signed up to make their own teams. As a result, they are allowed to compete with the girls in the fall.
As a team, swimmers are only in a certain number of events, meaning the coed teams will often save their male swimmers to stack them up on the relay races where there are four competitors from each team. Team manager and senior Anat Briskin stated, “Our swimmers are great so we can totally win or place high in plenty of individuals, but when it comes to relays the differences can stack up.”
Swim meets are divided up into multiple sections worth different points. Individual events are worth various amounts of points depending on placement, the first being six points, the second being four, the third being three, down to one. Only the first five teams are scored. For the relay event, the winning team gains a higher number of points when compared to those that aren’t first. If a team places first in a relay they get 8 points while the second gets four The third gets two, and the fourth and below get nothing. This means that if a team is losing they can turn the tides with one highly successful relay.
AHS Swim Team swimming at Greater Lawrence Technical School.
There are some members of the team that don’t personally have much of a problem with it, but it’s more so the principle that bothers them. One junior and particularly strong swimmer, Amelia Barron, says, “For me, racing against boys isn’t a big deal… but I believe that co-ed teams should only compete against other co-ed teams.” Barron explains that many co-ed teams stacking up their boys for big events means that girls can end up with less competition time. She said, “There is a unique challenge to swimming, in that it’s not just about wins and losses, it’s about continuing to improve your times. If coaches are only looking to win the meet, it changes the dynamic of the sport.”
Next year, coed teams won’t swim against same-sex teams, but the swim team has other troubles.
AHS doesn’t have a swimming pool, so the swim team needs to hold all of their practices at the pool at Greater Lawrence Technical School. The team holds practices after school every day of the week, along with before school on Thursdays. Since the school doesn’t usually provide transportation for its teams, the swim team is on its own when it comes to reaching practices, leaving them to rely on a carpool system with the team captains.
The team has also had to leave early from school most of the time in order to make it to their meetings. Co-captain and senior Cadence Singleton said, “With the schedule mostly being E and G block last, it’s sometimes tough to make up the work from leaving those classes frequently.”
Additionally, multiple girls on the team have expressed irritation with a general lack of respect received from the school despite their continued success as one of the school’s most highly winning-teams. Singleton said, “We barely get any recognition from the school which we feel is unfair since we are a strong team and have a long record of winning states and MVCS.”
