Bromfield’s boys and girls swim teams were in fine form last week. The girls edged out Grafton to win the 2025 Midland-Wachusett girls championship, the boys placed fourth, and the two teams collected a total of seven medals for their performances in both individual and relay events.
The meet was held at the six-lane indoor pool of Tantasqua Regional High School in Fiskdale, Jan. 30, and drew athletes from all nine Mid-Wach schools as well as three additional independents, parents and fans filling bleachers along the pool’s edge.
Before they could claim their championship plaque, the Bromfield girls had to beat a competitive Grafton team. Coach James Thomas told the Press that when he looked through performance statistics—also known as “psych sheets”—he knew it was going to be within 10 points either way. In the end, the deciding event was the final race of the day—the girls 400-yard freestyle relay.
Front row, from left: Sophia Andrade, Gracie Hanss, Naimh Fallon, Kiera Fallon, and Eliana Laham. Back row, from left: Felix Chien, Charlotte Miling, Daniel Belin, Vance Petrossi, and Isaac Xu.(Photo by John Osborn)
In a regulation high school 25-yard pool, each of a team’s four racers swims four laps. “We were nervous before the race, but we just locked in, we were ready to go,” said captain Sophia Andrade, a Bromfield senior. It was Gardner, however, that jumped to an early lead and by the time Andrade had finished the team’s third leg, Bromfield “was far behind,” she said in a post-meet interview. It was up to freshman Eliana Laham to close the gap, and that she did, swimming the final 100 yards in 52 seconds and beating Gardner’s anchor, sophomore Elise Moury by a mere one-hundredth of a second. Grafton finished the race in fifth place, 16 seconds behind the Trojans and outpaced by Gardner, Algonquin Regional, and Wachusett Regional swimmers.
A first-place finish by an individual swimmer, in, for example, the 100-yard backstroke, earns a team 20 points. A first-place finish in a relay race, however, earns twice that amount, 40 points. The Grafton Gators’ fifth-place finish in the 400-yard relay was worth 28 points—12 points fewer than Bromfield. That difference gave the girls enough points overall to outscore Grafton, 311-304, and win the championship.
With Bromfield’s Model U.N. club in session the same day as the meet, the boys second best swimmer was absent. That was an opportunity for eighth-grader Felix Chien to fill empty slots in the boys 200-yard medley relay team, which placed fifth, and the 200-yard freestyle relay team, which placed third. “We wouldn’t have been able to do that without [Chien],” senior co-captain Vance Petrossi said “With one of our best swimmers out, an eighth-grader stepped up. That was huge.”
Among other notable individual performances were Laham’s first-place medal in the 100-yard freestyle with a time of 54.49 seconds, fast enough to qualify for the sectional and state tournaments. Petrossi placed second in the 100-yard breaststroke (1:01.57) and also medaled in the 200-yard freestyle (1:51.51), finishing third and qualifying to compete at the sectional and state meets in both events.
While winning events as an individual at a championship meet is important, “winning the league as a team, that’s a big deal,” said Thomas, a 200-yard swimmer in high school and college.
Last Friday, the day following the league meet, 20 of the 37 boys and girls on this year’s team relaxed with a pickup game of water polo at the Swymfit pool in Boxborough where they train. “We’re going to have a little bit of fun, because most of the kids are done for the season,” said Thomas. The swimmers who qualified for the Central/West sectional and the state meet would be back Monday night to get ready for those events, he said. “It’s hard because … you’re trying to balance their workload and their rest to make sure that they’re hitting [their peak] at the best time. I’m still figuring out how to do it.”
Bromfield will be well-represented at the Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association Central/West Sectional Tournament scheduled for this weekend, Feb. 9, at Springfield College. The girls will compete in 10 events, including the 200-yard medley relay and the 400-yard freestyle relay. The boys qualified for five events, Including the 200-yard medley relay and the 200-yard free-style relay.
Bromfield medalists at the Jan. 30 Mid-Wach League championships
Boys
- 100-yard breaststroke: Vance Petrossi, 1:01.57, second
- 200-yard freestyle: Petrossi, 1:51.15, third
- 200-yard free relay: Daniel Belin, Isaac Xu, Felix Chien, and Petrossi, 1:40.04, third
Girls
- 100-yard freestyle: Eliana Laham, 54.49, first
- 400-yard freestyle relay: Gracie Hanss, Kiera Miera Fallon, Sophia Andrade, Laham, 3:56.10, first
- 50-yard freestyle: Laila Kvaracein, 25:81, second
- 200-yard medley relay: Charlotte Miling, Laham, Niamh Fallon, and Kiera Fallon, 2:00.95, second
