Mercury All-Area: Alfonso Mestre carves own swimming legacy at Hill School

The first two months were tough.

Alfonso Mestre got up every morning during the fall of his junior year at The Hill School and went to the pool to train by himself at 6 a.m.

A year prior, the workouts were spent with his older brother, Alberto, a record-breaking swimmer at Hill. The two were able to push each other during their workout sessions.

With Alberto at Stanford, Alfonso had to find that drive from somewhere else.

“You have no sense of motivation,” Mestre said of those first workout sessions. “You’re swimming alone. You have no idea whether your times are good or bad.”

Mestre said it took about two months for the routine to feel normal. He began to envision an imaginary swimmer up ahead of him in the pool. It gave him something to chase.

“It sounds kind of silly, but that worked for me,” he said.

Perhaps one of the imaginary swimmers was Alberto or Mestre’s father, Alberto Sr., also a star swimmer at the Hill School and the University of Florida as well as a two-time Olympian.

The record board on the wall overlooking the pool deck, littered with his last name, served as a constant reminder of the mark those two had left on the school.

By pursuing similar goals and exhibiting a similar drive and work ethic, Alfonso Mestre became the 2018-19 Mercury All-Area Boys Swimmer of the Year, just like his older brother did two years ago.

“I think that we all like to say that we follow our own paths when pursuing sport goals or anything related to that or personal achievement,” said Alberto Mestre, the 2016-17 All-Area Swimmer of the Year said.

“But at the end of the day, I think that when I was at school, I was trying to better my dad, and when my brother was competing for the Hill School he was trying to be better than me and my dad. I think that motivation really drove him because we’re a very competitive family.”

If Alberto Sr. could have chosen, his sons would not have followed his path in the pool. Mestre said his father didn’t want him to get into the sport because of how much discipline and dedication it took to be successful.

He tried to get them into sports like tennis and soccer when they were growing up in Venezuela. However, the brothers fell in love with the water. One day swimming per week turned to two, then three and eventually tennis and soccer were dropped for a full focus on the sport.

It turns out the things Alberto Sr. feared about the sport were exactly why his son fell in love with it.

“When I swim alone in the mornings, there’s no one really pushing me,” Alfonso said. “So if I think to myself, ‘Should I try to get better? Or should I slack off and not get tired for the rest of the day?’ It’s all about that. Discipline, hard effort and work and dedication.”

Hill School coach Amy Agnew began coaching three years ago for the end of Alberto’s tenure with the Blues. She said she was more of a facilitator as he tried to best his father’s marks.

Agnew has coached Alfonso for three years now, watching him not only improve in the pool, but adjust to the lifestyle at the boarding school as well.
She has been at those early morning sessions three times per week over the past two falls and after school in the spring.

“Even if he’s not feeling great, he’s in the water,” Agnew said. “He’s quiet, but he’s so dedicated to his sport.”

The family moved to Puerto Rico shortly before Alberto got to the Hill School as a sophomore in 2014. When Alberto arrived on campus his goal was to chase down his father’s records in the 50 and 100 free.

More of a distance swimmer, Alfonso was able to set his own path. He said he didn’t feel any kind of pressure when he came to the Hill to best any of his family’s marks. In fact, the family legacy was something that drew him to the school when his father asked him if would like to attend four years ago during his freshman year of high school in Puerto Rico.

“I knew that my dad came here, my brother came here, even my uncle came here,” Alfonso said. “I thought it would be pretty cool to be the last part of the tradition. I decided to come here and seal the tradition.”

Alfonso broke The Hill’s 500-yard freestyle record as a sophomore and broke his own mark again during the past two seasons, ending with a time of 4:26.73 for third place at the Eastern Interscholastic Swimming Championships.

His main focus this season was to break the school record in the 200 free, set by Ryan Owens in 2015, who beat the time of Alberto Sr.
Alfonso swam a time of a 1:38.73 at Easterns for a fourth-place finish and school record.

Though, he felt no obligation to chase after any of his family’s records, Mestre did make an effort to catch some of his brother’s individual marks in his final high school race during the first legs of the 200 free and 400 free relays.

His 50 free time in the 200 (20.73) and his 100 free time in the 400 (45.36) were not far off his brother’s times (20.00 and 44.57) in those events.

“Not bad for a distance swimmer,” he said with a chuckle.

While he couldn’t quite catch his brother’s individual marks, Alfonso’s relay teams did best the records set by Alberto’s teams in 2015

The first thing Alfonso did after the race was text his older brother to let him know two of his records had been bested.

“Even though we didn’t swim the same events, I think he had the same goals to leave a legacy and a mark at the school,” Alberto Mestre said of his younger brother’s impact.

“It’s definitely a swimming-centered family with them following in their father’s footsteps, but they all have kind of made their own mark,” Agnew added.

Alberto Sr. swam at the University of Florida from 1983-87.

When Alfonso was about seven years old living in Venezuela, his father reached out to Olympian Ryan Lochte, a UF grad, to set up a clinic in the country. Lochte came with Florida men’s head coach Anthony Neste. Ever since then, Alfonso wanted to be a Gator.

He’s set to swim there next year and join his brother, currently training at the school while he prepares to compete for Venezuela in the Pan-American games this summer, on campus shortly after graduation.

Like the Hill School, there will be reminders of his father’s legacy at Florida. During his official visit to the school, Alfonso saw pictures of his father’s national championship teams.

“For him, it’s going to be quite a similar environment freshman motivation wise, just to not live off the legacy of our father but to create his own legacy,” Alberto said. “I really think with his motivation, he can definitely do that.”