Fall Signing Day: Three Cavaliers Celebrate NCAA Commitments
By Dylan Howlett
2,636 words | 10-minute read
When, and how, a child chooses a sport — or a sport chooses a child — can be the happiest of accidents.
Ian Platts-Mills ’25 learned he had an affinity for water from the moment he jumped into a pool. He couldn’t explain it. He still can’t describe it. It just felt like home.
It did, too, for Bennett Harris ’25, who watched his older brother find joy, and excellence, in swimming. Maybe, Bennett thought, he could do the same one day. And possibly at the same college.
Saia Rampersaud ’25 was seven years old when her father, Edward, brought her to the driving range for the first time. Edward loved golf. Saia didn’t. At least not at first. She would walk around aimlessly and pick up half-broken tees and pluck blades of grass from the chewed-up turf. “I did not want to be there,” she said.
All three are soon-to-be collegiate athletes. Platts-Mills will join the swim team at the University of California, Berkeley in the fall. Harris will swim for Davidson College, the same school where his older brother, Trey Harris ’14, competed on the swim team. And little more than a decade after she first trudged to the driving range with her dad, Rampersaud won a third consecutive state team title with the Durham Academy girls golf team. She’ll continue her golf career this fall at Indiana University.
The families of the three commits gathered behind their children, watching as they put pen to ceremonial pieces of paper as part of Thursday afternoon’s DA Fall Signing Day. Their initial spark in the pool and on the golf course might have been happenstance.
But the dedication required to compete in NCAA athletics? It’s no accident.
Ian Platts-Mills ’25, Swimming — University of California, Berkeley
Club Team: North Carolina Aquatic Club
SwimSwam’s “Best of the Rest” selection, “Way Too Early List” of 2025 top boys recruits
8-time State Finalist
7-time DA school record holder
2023 NCISAA State Championships: 2nd in 200-yard individual medley, 3rd in 500-yard freestyle
Ranked 53rd on Swimcloud’s list of 2025 top boys recruits
A swimmer’s training schedule might seem torturous. It’s exactly what Ian Platts-Mills wants. He left his previous club team at the start of high school to join North Carolina Aquatic Club (NCAC), where he’s teammates with fellow DA swimmers Harris and Tyler Barritt ’25. Thus began an uncompromising regimen that Platts-Mills has maintained with exacting fidelity for two years: nine practices, 12 hours and more than 2,000 laps per week. That’s more than 30 miles per week, or 10 miles more than the length of the English Channel.
Monday: Two-hour morning session (4:45–6:45 a.m.) and two-hour evening session
Tuesday: Two-hour afternoon session
Wednesday: Two-hour morning session (4:45–6:45 a.m.) and two-hour evening session
Thursday: Two-hour afternoon session
Friday: Two-hour morning session (4:45–6:45 a.m.) and two-hour evening session
Saturday: Two-hour morning session
His offseason lasts all of three weeks in August. Then he dutifully returns to the water. Some of his club’s distance workouts stretch to five miles by the time he climbs out of the pool. On those days, when his muscles are barking and his joints are cantankerous, Platts-Mills will amble around the Upper School campus after morning practice and invariably exchange knowing glances with Harris and Barritt.
“The training that we do, in the trenches, it’s a lot of just mental resilience, being willing to go into another one and try hard again and getting beaten and beaten and beaten,” Platts-Mills says, banging the table in front of him to punctuate each “beaten.” He smiles. “It kind of just is what it is.”
The training has held the secret to his rapid progression — though never at the expense of his love for the water. Platts-Mills wasn’t, by his own admission, a youth prodigy. He started swimming when he was 6 years old, making the short walk from his family home to the Chapel Hill-Carrboro YMCA. He never turned down the opportunity to practice, or to spend more time in the pool. “I was never swimming to swim in college,” he says. “I didn’t go into practice to swim in college. I just loved to swim, and I just wanted to get better.”
He did, and quickly, once he arrived at the Upper School. His move to NCAC gave him the rigorous training that he craved. He pored over YouTube videos of collegiate swimmers, marveling at their pace and scrutinizing their stroke technique. He stuck to a regimented 9 p.m. bedtime and adopted a daily nap before afternoon practices. By the end of his sophomore year, Platts-Mills saw his pace skyrocket. He soon garnered attention from NCAA programs.
The right program, in the end, was UC-Berkeley. Platts-Mills visited for the first time in September 2023. He admired the sense of community and culture within the swim program, much the same as he had found at DA and NCAC. “The school there is awesome, and the kids were super invested in that,” Platts-Mills says. “But then they were also invested in super elite-level athletics and their swimming. I kind of felt like that was already a match for what I wanted to do.”
And the NCAA might just be the beginning. “I think he’s got some hopes of an Olympic swim in his future, and I think that’s very doable,” says John Manison, head coach of the DA boys and girls swim team. His training schedule, for one, exceeds that of some Olympic swimmers, Manison says. And the devotion with which Platts-Mills refines his technique has paid off. “His stroke is almost perfect,” Manison says. “If you go watch him compared to any swimmer you’ve ever heard of, he functionally looks identical. He has a fantastic stroke. There’s still some work to be done on his pace and things like that, but from the stroke perspective, it’s just become as good as anybody I’ve ever seen.”
When asked why he loves swimming, and the 4 a.m. alarms, and the incessant naps, and the family time and socialization he misses when he tucks into bed around 9 p.m., Platts-Mills chuckles. He’s been curious about it himself, he says. It’s not overly complicated. He loves the water.
“You can’t hold anything back or else it’s not going to be what you want,” Platts-Mills says. “I was in a position where I didn’t want to get too much in my head about it. But I still love this sport very much. I was able to work hard and get to that level, and it didn’t take a toll.”
Bennett Harris ’25, Swimming — Davidson College
Club Team: North Carolina Aquatic Club
7-time State Finalist
Member of three DA school-record relay teams
13-time DA school record breaker
2022 TISAC Conference Championships: 2nd in 500-yard Freestyle, 3rd in 200-yard Freestyle
One of Bennett Harris’ first swimming coaches was his older brother. Harris was about five years old when he started his competitive swimming journey on a summer league team at Hope Valley Country Club. Trey Harris ’14, his brothers, was about 15 at the time. He was a member of the DA swim team, and Trey would go on to earn All-State and All-Conference honors in his senior year. His younger brother was his biggest fan. “It was cool seeing him so far ahead,” Bennett Harris recalls. “I was thinking in my head at the time, ‘Maybe that will be my trajectory.’ And now here I am.”
Trey Harris would go on to swim at Davidson College, where he set a then-program record in the 100-meter individual medley time trial at the 2018 Atlantic 10 Championships. Bennett, by proximity, knew the program and its swimmers quite well. In May, he drove himself to Davidson and sat in on several economics classes. (Bennett Harris eventually wants to get involved in the family business; his father, Jay Harris, owns Harris Beverages, a beverage wholesaler.) He loved the small class sizes and the sprawling layout of Davidson’s campus.
He had already followed Trey first into the pool, and then onto the DA swim team. He’ll follow him again to Davidson.
“Most people have the opportunity to do it, but almost everyone gets burned out before they get to the level of collegiate swimming,” Bennett Harris says. “It’s really hard to get to that level.”
He knows well the importance of recovery to reach that elusive level — and of daily naps. “Literally — without fail — every single day,” Harris says of his ritualistic post-school nap. “There’s no way to be productive at both practices if you don’t recover properly.” Or eat properly.
Harris — who is club and DA teammates with Platts-Mills — eats throughout the day. He has no other choice. Harris, Platts-Mills and their teammates can burn up to 1,000 calories per hour during their most grueling training sessions. They’ll eat a sizable breakfast, a protein-heavy lunch — Harris had just left Raising Canes Chicken Fingers in Chapel Hill before he sat for an interview with DA Marketing & Communications — and snacks during their Upper School class periods.
Harris doesn’t count calories, but Manison estimates that his top-end swimmers eat between 10,000 and 12,000 calories every day to fuel their extensive training program. That puts them in the same ballpark as the famed 10,000-calorie diet of Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympian of all time.
Harris’ secret — other than calories — might very well be his mental fortitude. Manison considers himself an aficionado of mental performance in sports. He has found few equals to Harris. “His mental game is better than anyone else’s,” Manison says. His other top swimmers at DA — and anywhere, really — find it challenging to shake off a poor swim. Harris doesn’t get rattled. He gets angry, and he swims faster. “He’s found a way to push through pain and push through adversity better than most swimmers I’ve ever coached,” Manison says.
Saia Rampersaud ’25, Girls Golf — Indiana University
Three-Time NCISAA State Team Champion
Four-Time All-State Honoree
Five-Time All-Conference Honoree
Saia Rampersaud ’25 spent the weekend before DA Fall Signing Day at Indiana University. She sported Hoosiers-red fingernails — replete with a white, interlocking IU crest on her index fingers — courtesy of DA girls golf teammate Kenzie Kim ’26, who gave Rampersaud a complimentary manicure before her trip to Bloomington. Rampersaud and her family attended the home football game vs. the University of Michigan, whom Indiana defeated to secure its first 10–0 start in program history. The weekend was as auspicious as her initial interest in her eventual NCAA home was inauspicious.
“It was not on my radar at all,” Rampersaud says of IU. She didn’t know anyone from Indiana. She didn’t have any connection to the school, or to the state. She didn’t know how the Hoosiers women's golf program even became interested in her recruitment. “But they were really interested in me,” she says.
And for good reason. Rampersaud was a formidable complement to Jenna Kim ’27 — who in October won her third straight individual state championship — in each of the DA girls golf team’s runs to state titles. The program became the first DA athletics team in 20 years to win three consecutive state titles. By the start of her recruitment, Rampersaud had cemented herself as the second-best golfer in the state of North Carolina. And she had known since she was 13 that playing in college was a realistic possibility. Just not at Indiana. Perhaps.
Her first visit to Bloomington marked her first campus visit to any collegiate program. She thought of the trip as a way to practice chatting with coaches and meeting with players before she toured the schools where she actually wanted to go. Then something strange happened after she made all of her visits: Indiana was her favorite. “You can tell when you’re their first choice,” Rampersaud says. “They really make that clear.” Indiana’s coaching staff was insistent. They wanted Rampersaud on their team. She loved the level of detail with which they approached goal-setting for the whole season and for individual tournaments. She adored the program’s state-of-the-art practice facility, which contains ample indoor space to allow year-round practice, even in the middle of unforgiving Midwestern winters.
They were suddenly on her radar. And all over it. “You can really just get the vibe of who wants you and who doesn’t,” Rampersaud says of the recruiting process. “I just really felt they believed in me.”
She already had a big believer in Kevin Wicker. In the summer of 2022, shortly after he had become head coach of the DA boys and girls golf teams, Wicker pulled up to the parking lot at Hope Valley Country Club. It was the first time he would lead a practice for the girls team. He glanced around and saw Rampersaud on the putting green, working diligently through her routine and her self-assigned drills. “She probably works as hard as or harder than any player I know of, or have been around, in my 20 years of coaching,” Wicker says.
In time, Wicker would watch Rampersaud grow into a team leader — and, by her senior year, the team captain — who would text her teammates motivational quotes at all hours. She would also come to embody the same relentlessness that Wicker saw on the practice putting green. At the 2024 NCISAA Division I State Championships in October, Rampersaud stumbled on her opening nine holes during the tournament’s final round. Providence Day School had narrowed DA’s lead. The Cavaliers would need their very best on the final nine holes to ward off the challenge and secure their third straight state title. Wicker sidled up to Rampersaud on the 10th tee. This is a new nine, he said. This is a new start. It’s time to play. He pointed toward a fixed point on the fairway. “Hey,” he said. “I need your ball to be at a certain target. Nothing else matters except for that target. Hit it.” Rampersaud did. She hit her second shot to about 15 feet. And she made the putt for birdied. For the first time in that tense final round, Rampersaud smiled.
“She’s just a fighter,” Wicker says. “She loves the golf team. She loves the competition. She’s just such a wonderful golfer and a great person.”
Rampersaud has already authored a shining moment on one of golf’s most famous grounds: Augusta National Golf Club. She competed in the 2021 Drive, Chip & Putt Championship, a free nationwide junior skills competition open to golfers ages 7 to 15. It challenges each participant in driving (longest drive off the tee), chipping (closest to the hole) and putting (closest to the hole).
Rampersaud was 14 when she strode to the 18th green. It is a veritable pool table of Bermuda grass that often decides the winner of The Masters, one of the most celebrated tournaments in professional men’s golf. The Drive, Chip & Putt competition was held just days before The Masters, and the greens had been shaved down to tournament conditions — as fast and as treacherous as any in golf. “I was so scared to hit the putt,” Rampersaud says.
Her family watched from the green’s edge. Her mom, Avni, was there. So was her younger brother, Milan Rampersaud ’28. And so too was her dad, Edward, who first brought a begrudging Saia to the driving range at Hope Valley Country Club to share the game that he loved. Now Edward was watching his daughter stand over a putt on one of the sport’s most famous greens.
The 15-foot putt broke from right to left, trundling along the contours of the green just as Rampersaud had trundled behind Edward so many years before on the driving range. The ball slipped into the hole. The Rampersauds roared.
“That was probably,” Saia Rampersaud says, “a top-5 golf highlight of my career.”
So far, that is. Bloomington, and beyond, awaits.
Bria Irizarry contributed additional reporting.