David Fox
Head Coach
Water Polo
For the 2024 season, David Fox returns as Head Coach of the Boys’ Water Polo team, a role he held from 2005-2014 and in 2018. Across his water polo career, Fox played, coached, and officiated at the national levels in United States Water Polo as well as in the Collegiate Water Polo Association.
Fox began playing water polo as part of off-season swimming programs in Tulsa, Oklahoma. After graduating from college in 1993, Fox returned to his hometown and became the Head Coach of the Tulsa Water Polo Club, which already had a few players on the USA National Youth and USA National Junior Teams. One player went on to the U. S. National Team and was named National Collegiate Player of the Year at the University of California at Berkeley. Because of the players' successes, Fox was fortunate to have had access to, and mentorship from, many of the top water polo coaches in the nation by the time he was 26.
In 1998, Fox left Tulsa for Harvard University where he served as an administrator and teacher as well as the Assistant Coach for the Men’s Water Polo Team. In addition to placing players on All-East and All-American teams, the Harvard team placed third at the Eastern Championships in 2001, its highest finish to that point in program history. During his six years at Harvard, Fox also served as the Assistant Coach of the Northeast Zone National Team; in this capacity, he spent each spring coaching the best players in the East against the best players in the nation as part of USA Water Polo’s Premier League and its Olympic Development Program.
At Andover, Fox assisted with the Andover Boys’ Water Polo Team during the 2004 season and then served as Head Coach for the next nine years. Across those years, the team consistently qualified for the Final Four championship tournament; the team won the 2013 New England Championship. In addition, Andover developed many players who went on to play in college, among them: Howie Kalter ’07, a member of the All-East Team--meaning, essentially, he was considered among the top 6 players in the nation not playing at a powerhouse California program--while playing for Bucknell University and now Andover’s regular Head Coach, as well as Travis Bouscaren ’14, who led Andover to that first title and played for Brown University as well as professionally.
Other Andover players have applied some of their work in our water polo program to other athletic endeavors. For example, two Andover players forwent the opportunity to play goalkeeper at the NCAA Division I level in order to play other sports: William Faulkner ’09 rowed at Stanford University, and Andrew Wilson ’12 swam at Emory and won a Gold Medal in swimming at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. In addition, Jacob Hudgins ’19 has won multiple Silver Medals at World Championships in Rowing.
Swimming
A former nationally ranked age-group swimmer, state-record holder, and qualifier for the NCAA Division III Championships, David Fox returned to his native Oklahoma following his graduation from Bates College, where he held school records in nine of the eighteen individual swimming events.
From 1993-1996, Fox coached SwimTulsa and the Trojan Aquatic Club and worked with 21 Junior National qualifiers, one Junior National Champion, six Senior National qualifiers, and one Olympic Trials qualifier. For the next eight years, he taught at Booker T. Washington High School in Tulsa and served as a student, teacher, coach, and administrator at Harvard University.
In 2004, Fox joined the English Department at Phillips Academy, and in 2006, he began assisting Coach Jacques Hugon '79 with the Boys' Varsity Swimming and Diving Team. During the next six years under Coach Hugon's leadership, the team held a 44-4 dual-meet record (44-1 in New England) and won three New England Championships.
In 2012, Fox was named Head Coach of the Boys' Varsity Swimming and Diving Team. During his eleven seasons as Head Coach--he took a sabbatical in 2015 and lost a season in 2021--Andover is 88-3 in dual meets (75-0 in New England) and has won the New England Championship each of the ten times the team has attended the meet. In addition, during eight of the eleven seasons, Andover has been ranked among the top 25 high school programs--public and independent--in the United States.
In 2013, Andover attended its first Eastern Championships since the 1970s and placed fourth. In 2014, the team returned and placed fourth again. Following a two-year absence, Andover placed second at both the 2017 and 2018 Eastern Championships. 2019 brought a historic achievement: Andover won its first Eastern Championship, the first New England team to do so. The team repeated this feat in 2020. After a third-place finish in 2022, Andover won its third Eastern title in 2023 and its fourth in 2024.
Since 2012, Andover swimmers and divers have broken 323 National, Eastern, class, pool, meet, school, and New England records. In addition, Fox has guided 35 individual swimmers to 76 distinct All-American Awards, and Andover swimmers have gone faster than the All-American "consideration" standard more than 227 times.
With the opening of the Pan Athletic Center and the Christopher Lynn '66 Pool, Fox was able to combine the "varsity" and "junior varsity" teams and serve as the head coach for all 44 swimmers who wished to compete for the boys' team during the 2023-2024 season.
In addition to coaching the team and teaching English--usually eleventh and twelfth graders with electives in philosophy and literature, critical theory, Don Quixote, The Wire, and Shakespeare, among others--Fox teaches Andover's year-long course in the history of art and visual culture, completed 17 years of living in a ninth-grade dormitory, and served as the Director of Studies. In 2017, the Trustees of Phillips Academy awarded Fox the Frederick W. Beinecke Teaching Foundation, an honor he retains permanently.
Fox holds degrees from Bates College and Harvard University.