The Girls Swimming and Diving team finished their dual meet season with an undefeated record and an exciting 2nd-place finish in this year’s New England Championships held at Hotchkiss on March 8th.  Exeter finished just 5 points short of Andover for the championship.

One of the major highlights of the season was watching Exeter’s 200 Medley Relay team break the oldest standing record on the New England board.  The existing record was also set by Exeter girls 15 years ago in 1994. Achieving an Automatic All America qualifying time, the team of uppers Andie Tibbetts, Erin Brady, Christy Thew and prep Emma Nuzzo lowered the standard from 1:49.89 to 1:49.21.  The girls not only set a New England record but also set a new Hotchkiss pool and Exeter Varsity record.  This year’s Medley Relay and Exeter’s 1994 Medley Relay are the only two relays to break the 1:50.00 mark in the history of the girls championship meet.

Also earning All America Consideration is Exeter’s 400 Freestyle Relay of uppers Petra Janney, Christy Thew, Erin Brady and Emma Nuzzo. Their first place finish time of 3:36.16 set both a new Hotchkiss pool and Exeter Varsity record.

Records were also broken in the middle of the meet with Emma Nuzzo’s two record-breaking swims in the 50 free.  Emma first broke the record with her morning preliminary swim and then again in the evening finals with a time of 24.21.  Emma placed second only 23/100th of a second behind the top place finisher from Deerfield.  Emma also placed second in the 100 freestyle.

Additional highlights in the championships were Andie Tibbetts, Christy Thew, upper Grace Cassidy and lower Nicole Anderson placing 2nd, 3rd, 8th and 9th in the 100 backstroke, and Exeter’s 7 out of 8 relays taking first places in the meet. 

Over the course of this season the varsity girls swimmers and divers achieved 138 career best performances.  With the majority of the team establishing multiple career bests, upper Lauren Davis topped the list with 14 followed by Nicole Anderson and Prep Jennifer Liu with 12.  Petra Janney led the team this past weekend with six championship career best swims.

The team wishes to thank managers Clare Pak and Andrew Lu for all their help this season. 

Captains elect for next year are Christy Thew and Petra Janney

Submitted by Coach Jean Farnum and Athletic Director Rob Morris