Thomas Fang's high school swimming career officially ended with the boys 400-yard freestyle relay team taking third place at the District 11 Championships this past weekend. Over the past four seasons, Fang has played an important role and helped the Emmaus boys to gold medals at districts in each of those four seasons.

"Thomas has been a solid sprinter for us this year," said coach Tim O'Connor. "Thomas always gives his best effort and he's been a big part of our program throughout his high school career."

The district meet wasn't only Fang's last high school swim meet, it was likely his last competitive meet, since he doesn't plan on continuing his swimming career in college at the University of Pennsylvania.

"I'm going to focus on school work, but I might do some club swimming," said Fang, who will major in mathematics at Penn. "I've always liked math and I'm interested in possibly doing actuarial science; I thought that might seem sort of interesting."

Looking back over both his final season and his high school swimming career, Fang feels good about what he and his teammates were able to accomplish.

"I thought this season went pretty well," he said. "The team trained hard and we got along together great and it was a great year. I'm proud of how well we've done and it's been a lot of fun."

Fang was a part of the boys 200-yard freestyle relay team that just missed making states by just two tenths of a second. In addition to being a part of that team, Fang had a busy weekend at the district meet, finishing tied for third in the boys 50-yard freestyle, finished fifth in the 100-yard freestyle and was also on the 400-yard freestyle relay team, which also just missed a bid at states, falling one half second off the final qualifying time for the PIAA meet.

"We all swam hard and we had a good meet, but it was tough, which we knew it was going to be coming into districts," said Fang. "Everybody just came in to swim their best and to see what happens."

O'Connor was happy overall with the performance of his team this past weekend, but would have liked to see Fang and his relay teammates get bids into states.

"When you look at how hard Thomas and our other seniors worked this season, you'd like to have all of them go to states, but there are a lot of good swimmers in District 11 and you're up against the best there is, so it's tough," said O'Connor.

Fang believes when he reflects on his high school career, he's going to have a lot of great memories.

"I made a lot of great friends through swimming and we all worked hard and went through a lot, so there's a lot to remember," said Fang.