The Bolles School in Jacksonville, Florida is one of the country’s most storied swimming programs. The men have won 24-straight Division 1 titles in the state of Florida. Mind you, that’s not 24-straight in a smaller swimming state where there’s not a ton of competition. This is 24-straight in the highest division in Florida, where a huge chunk of the country’s Division 1 talent comes from every year.
They took the victory even without Joseph Schooling, who is off competing internationally for Singapore, and did so on the back of an meet-anchoring 400 free relay time of 3:00.67. That nips .01 seconds off of the 2009 (suited) record set by the impressive Saratoga High School quartet of Ben Hinshaw, Adam Hinshaw, Matt Murray, and Ian Burns.
The Bolles school put together a relay of three seniors (George Frank, Preston Jenkins, and Teo D’Alessandro), but the stud was junior Ryan Murphy, who took the 2nd leg in 43.88.
Here’s the comparative splits between the two relays:
| Saratoga (2009) | Bolles School (2011) |
| Matt Murray 44.83 | George Frank 45.86 |
| Ian Burns 45.45 | Ryan Murphy 43.88 |
| Adam Hinshaw 46.35 | Preston Jenkings 45.82 |
| Ben Hinshaw 44.05 | Teo D’Alessandro 45.11 |
As you can see, Bolles’ strength was their experience and not having a weak links. Saratoga’s relay included a freshman (Burns) and a sophomore (Adam Hinshaw), and had those two been more towards the primes of their careers, they likely would have broken the three-minute barrier.
Saratoga’s time still stands as the public school record (ignore the official NISCA record books – they are wrong on both the public and private school sides of this record).
Bolles went 2:59 in 1991 at Easterns in February. That was the year NISCA said in order to have your time count, it has to be during your state’s swim season. Florida’s swim season runs from August-November, so the record was never made official, but it stands as the school record.
Why doesn’t Saratoga have the public school record? Last time I checked they were a public school…
Let me do some more research. The official NISCA records are really screwed up – they say that Bolles has the Independent School Record from 1989 at 3:00.68. The Bolles website says they went a 2:59 in 1991. And Hershey is listed as the public school record. Something’s not making sense here…