A group of St. Andrew’s swimmers qualified for the DIAA State Championship and made the trip to the University of Delaware. Like most of the winter sports, this was the first time competing in the winter season DIAA postseason in over two years. It was a long weekend of swimming, and the Saints logged some very impressive times and finishes. The State Championship for Delaware Swimming features swimmers from all competing schools in the state, so just to earn a spot in the top 40 and make this meet is a difficult feat.  

Girls Recap
Four Saints qualified and scored points for the girls varsity team. Madison Macalintal ’22, Caroline Forde ’22, Emma Hopkins ’23, and Elizabeth Rainey ’22 qualified in two events each and scored in their respective events. Rainey suffered an injury in her first event but swam through it to finish 8th in the state in the 50 free. Forde finished 8th in the 200 free and 10th in the 500 free, dropping considerable time in both events. Macalintal finished 16th and 14th in the 100 fly and 100 back, and Hopkins finished 12th in the 50 free and 10th in the 100 back.  Unfortunately, due to Rainey’s injury, the team was unable to put either relay up in prelims on Thursday. Despite that, the four swimmers propelled the team to a 14th place finish in the state. Making that feat more impressive is the relays count for double points. All four swimmers dropped considerable time from their previous swims earlier in the season to earn these positions. Rainey was only a few tenths off of her team record with her prelims 50 freestyle swim of 24.44.  

Boys Recap
The boys had ten swimmers qualify for the meet. Gavin Frazer ’22, Andrew Chen ’25, Javier Iniguez ’22, Austin Chuang ’23, Danny Huang ’22, Michael Novacescu ’23, Zachary Macalintal ’24, Keizen Ameriks ’24, Kieran Bansal ’24, and Cooper Drazek ’24 all qualified for events. The relay team of Chuang, Ameriks, Novacescu, and Huang finished 9th in the state for the 200 medley relay. In the 200 free, Chen finished 24th and Macalintal finished 30th and dropped time from their personal best DISC performance a few weeks prior. In the 200 IM, Ameriks dropped time to finish 10th overall while Iniguez finished 26th and Bansal finished 28th. Novecescu was 7th in the state in the 50 freestyle with Huang right behind him at 10th. Drazek also dropped significant time in the event to finish 24th overall. The highest individual finish came from Novacescu when he captured 5th in the 100 fly with a time that placed him on the school record board, 0.17 faster than Andrew Park's 2020 record. Macalintal dropped a few seconds to move to 29th overall in the 100 fly.  In the 100 free, Huang swam an inspired swim to win the consolation heat for 9th place overall, dropping another 0.6 seconds from his lifetime best swim a couple days prior in the preliminaries. Frazer went from 35th to 26th overall with a huge drop, and Drazek was just behind him in 27th with a good drop as well. Bansal dropped significant time to place in the top 16 and finished 11th overall in the 500 free. In the 200 free relay the team of Bansal, Macalintal, Drazek and Frazer finished 14th overall in an extremely competitive event. Ameriks shocked the backstroke field with a very fast 6th place finish only a few seconds off the school record, while Chen finished 18th and Chuang finished 22nd. In his last swim as a Saint, Iniguez' had yet another time drop, moving him into 20th place overall in the 100 breaststroke. The Saints saved their best for last when the 400 free relay team of Huang, Drazek, Novacescu, and Ameriks finished in 4th place.  All of these results landed the Saints with an amazing 6th place finish in the State!  It was a true team effort from the ten swimmers. The Saints shocked a lot of schools in the meet and it was one of the highest finishes in team history.

Writing Credit | Coach Matt Harris