In its first meet at home since Oct. 21, NC State’s swim and dive team picked up three team wins over UNC and Virginia on Jan. 20-21.
Split between UNC’s Koury Natatorium and the Casey R. Willis Aquatic Center, the men’s team came out on top over both the Cavaliers and Tar Heels. The women weren’t able to best UVA’s nation-leading squad of Olympians and other national-caliber swimmers but picked up an easy win over No. 17 UNC.
“This meet they just get excited for, because it’s great competition,” said head coach Braden Holloway. “With UNC and Virginia being able to do a tri-meet, it adds a lot of excitement, because it’s great teams going head-to-head. We’ve never done a tri-meet with these teams before, so I think they were just excited to test themselves.”
Competition kicked off at Koury Natatorium in Chapel Hill on Friday, Jan. 21. Faced with No. 14 Virginia and a solid squad of swimmers from UNC on its home turf, the No. 4 Wolfpack men picked up three sweeps in the 500-yard freestyle, 200-yard butterfly and 50-yard freestyle events.
NC State’s distance crew looked strong as ever in the 500-yard freestyle, thanks to a 1-2-3 finish from junior James Plage, senior Ross Dant and junior Will Gallant, respectively. Gallant finished over a second ahead of the fourth-place finisher, Jack Wright of Virginia, to cement the Wolfpack’s first sweep of the meet.
Graduate student Emma Muzzy was the women’s lone first-place finisher of Friday evening, posting 1:54.54 in the women’s 200-yard backstroke to beat Virginia’s Reilly Tiltmann by a mere 0.09 seconds. Between No. 1 Virginia and No. 4 NC State, most of the individual wins on the women’s side came from the Cavaliers, but the Wolfpack’s depth ensured that Virginia’s win wouldn’t be by a total landslide.
“Seeing what we were able to do in the distance events on the men’s side, women’s backstroke was really great for us,” Holloway said. “I think those were some of the performances that stood out.”
Although the men didn’t face competition quite as tough, several dominant wins defined a great first session for the Wolfpack. A 1-2-3-4 finish in the 50-yard freestyle, led by sophomore sprinting phenom David Curtiss, gave NC State valuable points early on in the meet. Additionally, all four men broke the 20-second barrier, an impressive feat for a midseason meet.
On Saturday morning, the Wolfpack women won the 200-yard freestyle, the 100-yard backstroke and the 200-yard individual medley. Four-time All-American junior Abbey Webb placed first in the 200-yard freestyle, beating out UVA’s Aimee Canny by a mere 0.24 seconds to post a 1:46.48. It’s no surprise that junior Abby Arens took home a win for the Wolfpack in the 200-yard individual medley, touching the wall in 1:58.71.
Senior Katharine Berkoff and freshman Kennedy Noble went 1-2 in the women’s 100-yard backstroke, racking up crucial points against the Cavaliers and the Tar Heels. Berkoff, a backstroke phenom who currently holds the American record in the 100-yard backstroke, was the only swimmer in the field under 52 seconds. Noble followed close behind, posting an impressive 52.72.
NC State also celebrated senior day on Saturday morning, bidding farewell to some of its most prolific seniors and leaders — graduate student Kylee Alons, Berkoff, Dant and countless others that swam their second-to-last regular-season meet amid a cheering crowd of friends and family.
“This senior group is awesome,” Holloway said. “Not just leaders in the pool and on the boards, but just as people. Their personalities — it’s just contagious, and they make people around them better, they make people around them happy. They make us coaches just better coaches and people, we love them for that. They’ve embraced the true meaning of NC State.”
The Wolfpack will face No. 5 Texas on the road this Friday and Saturday while some members of the Pack stay back in Raleigh to face UNC-Wilmington on Friday, January 27.
