After swimming with the Sedona Red Rock High School swim team for the last four years and with the Sedona Swordfish for longer, Andrew Tate will be swimming in a different environment next school year, going from the Southwest to the Northwest. Tate has signed his Letter of Intent to swim for and attend Whitman College in Walla Walla, Washington.

Whitman got in contact with Tate, who made a visit to the campus in December. Upon doing that, he realized that it was a good fit.

“Whitman reached out to me,” Tate said. “It’s really outdoor oriented. They just seem like a real piece of family on the swim team, which is something I really want to have. It just felt right. I toured the campus and met with the coach — it’s beautiful. And it’s a beautiful pool.”

Tate also noted that in Arizona, most of the options for swimming in college are Division I. He added that there was interest from other schools, but Whitman’s overall experience — namely the educational part of it — drew him in.

“While there were a couple of fast schools that I got accepted to and probably could have swam for, I wouldn’t have had fun,” he said. “I don’t want swimming to be the focal point when I would really rather have a good education.”

While at Whitman, Tate will study computer science. He wanted a major that would allow him to have a job where he could live and work wherever he wanted. Tate felt that computer science and software development were good avenues toward having that kind of career.

While swimming for the Blues, Tate’s focus will likely be on the longer-distance events, such as the mile swim, the 1,000 and 500 yard freestyle events and the 200 butterfly. But he also pointed out that one of the reasons Whitman likely reached out to him was his versatility in the water. With that, he might be called upon to swim shorter distances and different strokes.

And while swimming is an individual sport, Tate knows that he didn’t get to a point where he’ll be swimming in college alone. Among the first people he thanked were his parents, Beth and Grady, for helping to keep him going in swimming. But the list didn’t stop there.

Tate was grateful for coaches like Paul Cate, who works with the Scorpions and Swordfish, and who Tate called the “grandfather of the team.” He also thanked both A. Jay Bronson and Dan Morse, who both formerly served as head coaches of both the Swordfish and high school teams before taking jobs elsewhere.

“Dan, once he left, every time I’d listen to a song from his [practice] playlist, I’d break down into tears — so he obviously had an impact,” Tate said. “And A. Jay is still helping me to this day, and I’m super grateful for that.”/

Tate additionally expressed gratitude to fellow swimmers like Carlos Lattanzi, Zach Dana and Louise “Breezy” Taylor, who were all teammates of his on both the Scorpions and Swordfish teams. He similarly thanked Swordfish teammates Benny Guadarrama, who swam for the Swordfish and Scorpions, and graduated in 2015, and Emma Warner, another Swordfish swimmer who won a state championship for Mingus in 2019.

“If they weren’t there and I didn’t have anyone else to swim with through the year, it would have been rough,” he said. “Them being there really helped.”

Tate also leaves Sedona with some good memories in the pool.

One was winning a state championship in the 200-yard freestyle relay in November. Tate swam the third leg, behind fellow seniors Eric Schrader and Cody Brefeld and handed it off to the anchor leg, Lattanzi. Tate also finished fourth in the 500-yard freestyle, fifth in the 200-yard freestyle and third in the 400-yard freestyle relay with the same trio of teammates.

He called his most meaningful memory of swimming in Sedona qualifying for the Far Westerns, a meet in California, at 14. Tate was the only member of his team to qualify, which would normally mean going out with only his family. But that was not the case.

“Normally, if you’re the only person on a swim team to make it to this swim meet out in California, you’re destined to go out there by yourself,” he said. “But both A. Jay and Benny, they flew out to Los Angeles and drove up to coach me. That was an important memory.”

And those are memories that he hopes other kids from Sedona and the Verde Valley can have.

Of course, not everyone will get to swim in college. But Tate hopes that everyone who swims and those around swimming remember that it’s supposed to be a fun activity before anything else.

“One thing I want everybody to take home is that above all, swimming should be something you have fun with — a building block of your life that means a lot to you,” Tate said. “Something you can take home and helps you grow as a person.”

“And I want people to take home that, above all, it should be for the kids,” he added. “There isn’t a whole lot for kids to do around here. I think swimming is important because of that. It should be cherished as important.”