The NC State swimming and diving team season ended back in March, with the men finishing fourth at NCAAs and the women garnering yet another top-20 finish. While the NCAA season came to an end with those meets, the members of the Pack have found plenty of competition to stay busy during the summer.
A large group of Wolfpack swimmers participated in competitions while school was out, including a trio of NC State student-athletes that took part in the prestigious Pan Pacific Championships and a group of 24 swimmers taking part in the Phillips 66 National Championships.
In addition to the competitions, the NC State swimming and diving team made some major changes to its coaching staff over the summer. Associate head coach Gary Taylor, who handled the long-distance swimmers, was hired as the head swimming coach at Auburn in April.
To replace Taylor, NC State hired longtime Virginia head coach Mark Bernardino. Bernardino had spent the last four years as an associate head coach at South Carolina, and had been a coach of the U.S. national team for four years before that. Bernardino’s impressive resume features a more than 30-year stint as the head coach at Virginia, where his teams combined for 43 ACC titles.
Recent graduate Hannah Moore took her talents to a different venue early in the summer, competing in the U.S. Open Water National Championships in May. Moore competed both the 10-kilometer and 5-kilometer races, finishing second in the 5km with a time of 58:42.418, 24 seconds behind the winner, Erica Sullivan.
In the 10km, Moore finished in 1:53:36.242, good for sixth place. Moore also went on to represent the United States in the 10km in the 2018 Pan Pacific Championships in Tokyo earlier this month. In that event, Moore tied for fifth place, finishing with a time of 2:08:33.50.
Senior Justin Ress and recent graduate Alexia Zevnik also competed at the Pan Pacific Championships, with Ress representing the U.S. in one event and Zevnik representing Canada in two. Ress finished second in the ‘B” final of the 100-meter backstroke, finishing just .04 seconds off a win with a time of 53.59.
Zevnik swam in the 50-meter freestyle and the 100 free, placing eighth in the ‘B’ final of the 100 free after finishing with the 18th-best time in prelims. Zevnik swam the final in 55.45. In the 50 free, she placed 21st in prelims.
Prior to the Pan Pacific Championships, Ress and Moore, along with 22 other NC State swimmers or recently graduated Pack swimmers, competed in the Phillips 66 National Championships in Irvine, California from July 25-29.
The Pack won four medals throughout the event, with Ress winning two, recent graduate Ryan Held winning one and senior Elise Haan winning one. Ress captured silver in the 50-meter freestyle, finishing .07 off the winner with a time of 24.31. Ress also won bronze in the 100-meter backstroke, finishing in 53.26.
Held’s lone medal came in the 50-meter backstroke, as he touched in 24.60 to secure the hardware. Haan had a busy week, which was highlighted by a bronze medal in the 50 back. She finished in 27.90, two-tenths of a second off of the winner.
The rest of the Pack’s field was made up of current student-athletes and recent graduates, and had a number of members of the team reach secondary finals across the board.
