A greater depth in players on the final day of competition wasn’t enough for the North Carolina swimming and diving team to vault past N.C. State on Saturday at the Janis Hape Dowd Nike Cup.
The tournament took place at Koury Natatorium over Thursday, Friday and Saturday with sessions at 10 a.m. and 6 p.m. each day. The timing was not ideal for the Tar Heels, as schoolwork conflicted with competition.
“The first two days we were pretty thin as far as the number of people competing,” head coach Rich DeSelm said. “We elected to have a majority of the people attend class and not swim individually in the meet, and then only a few of them swam relays at night, but (Saturday) we were pretty much fully participating unless somebody was sick or injured.”
But sophomore Nikki Barczak was still pleased with the way the team performed through the conflicts.
“I love the way we came out and raced despite the fact that we had to go to classes and practice through this meet,” Barczak said.
On Saturday, however, when there was no class, the team came out strong. Barczak and fellow sophomore Patrick Myers took first place in the women’s 100-yard freestyle and men’s 200-yard backstroke, respectively, and freshman Ozzie Moyer took gold in the men’s 1-meter diving.
The team’s performance on the final day of competition pleased coach DeSelm.
“(Saturday) was great — we had some very good team energy and some good prelim performances that set us up for even faster swimming at (the night session),” DeSelm said. “I saw a lot of positive things on both the men’s team and the women’s team.”
But those individual efforts were not enough to give UNC first place in the overall men’s or women’s competition. N.C. State finished first in both with final scores of 1195.5 and 933, respectively. UNC’s 901 and 816 were enough to secure second place.
