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The Daily Tar Heel

Men's swimming and diving finishes 38th in NCAA championships

The North Carolina men’s swimming and diving team showed its youth this weekend at the NCAA championships, finishing 38th at the national meet.

Freshman Jack Nyquist placed 16th in the three-meter diving to score and sophomore Sam Lewis placed 11th in the 100-yard butterfly, giving UNC a total of seven points , which was not enough to propel the Tar Heels to their goal of a top-20 finish.

“We had higher expectations than ended up being the case in terms of scoring and points,” said coach Rich DeSelm .

The real competition in swimming isn’t necessarily the person in the next lane but against the clock and within the athlete himself. Only seconds separate the first from the last, and it’s up to the athlete to continue to shave seconds off of his time.

This is especially true at the NCAA meet, which features the best athletes from around the country. UNC missed a few opportunities to improve its score. Nyquist finished 17th in the one-meter dive because of one bad dive, missing his chance to score by .85 of a point .

On the 400-yard freestyle relay team, UNC recorded a season-best time but was still .88 seconds out of scoring position . Sophomore Ben Colley swam an excellent 200-yard fly aside from the final length, where he dropped to 20th.  

DeSelm said that his team had to make sure it learned from its experience and improve. The level of competition increases at NCAA’s, but he says that should not affect his athletes' confidence when they are in the pool. He added that not only would their experiences impact themselves, but also their teammates at future meets.

“We’re just going to make sure that we’re more prepared for the meet once we get there,” Lewis said, “and that we have the right mindset to go out guns blazing in the first swim.”

Lewis added that UNC took a few swims to acclimate to the atmosphere of the meet, which put them behind. But he said he and his teammates will learn from their experience and make use of the advantage of their youth.

They’ll be back next year. 

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