UNC swimming team earns commanding win against Maryland

The North Carolina swimming and diving team jumped out to a hot start, winning the first nine events in its wins Saturday against Maryland.

After two relay wins to start the day, UNC swimmers placed first and second in seven consecutive individual events.

Maryland’s first individual finish higher than third place came in the 10th event, the men’s 100-yard breaststroke, as freshman David Speese narrowly edged Brad Hamilton of North Carolina for the win.

“We always like to come out strong when we can, establish the tone of the meet, and get some energy and enthusiasm going through our team and our bench,” coach Rich DeSelm said.

And a strong start was all that North Carolina needed.

After senior co-captain Laura Moriarty won the 100-yard breaststroke, the ninth event of the day, the women’s team held a commanding 75-18 lead. The men held a 57-17 lead at the same point in the meet.

“We really wanted to start out with a bang and get ahead as far as we could,” said Moriarty.

Much of that quick start was due to the strong swimming of sophomore Stephanie Peacock. Peacock won the first two individual events in the women’s meet, setting the tone for the rest of the UNC swimmers.

After completing a nearly 10-minute, 1000-yard freestyle, she dove back into the pool and won the 200-yard freestyle with only 10 minutes of rest in between events.

“I used the 1000 as more of a warm-up for the 200,” Peacock said. “We’ve been ready for this meet all week. We haven’t rested at all.”

The diving team continued the strong performance that the swimming team began, as both the men and women won their first diving event.

At the halfway point in both the men’s and women’s meets, it was apparent that UNC would prevail. The strong start that each team had posted would be insurmountable for the Maryland squads.

North Carolina had such commanding leads late in the meets that the coaching staff began to exhibition events, meaning the UNC swimmers would swim, but their points would not be counted. This brought the final scores closer than they otherwise would have been, but UNC still won by wide margins in both meets.

At no point did North Carolina lose its intensity as a team after its quick start. Even as they began to exhibition events, the benches still cheered on their teammates until the final relay ended.

As both North Carolina teams moved to 3-0 on the season in the ACC, they showed respect for the Maryland swimmers — some of which DeSelm has had his eye on before.

“I do believe that they are a vastly improving team,” DeSelm said. “They’ve got some swimmers that we recruited and wanted.”

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