Coach Rich DeSelm’s 2014 University of North Carolina men’s swimming and diving team has qualified eight swimmers and one diver to compete later this month in the NCAA Division I Championships to be held at University of Texas’ Lee and Joe Jamail Texas Swimming Center in Austin, March 27-29.
The Carolina contingent includes four swimmers who qualified in individual events, a diver who earned his spot with his performance at the NCAA Zone B Diving Championships earlier this week and four swimmers who will attend as alternates on relay teams for the Tar Heels.
Carolina’s four swimmers who attained individual times that earned entry into the field are sophomore Ben Colley in the 200-yard butterfly (1:42.19, a school record), senior Alex Gianino in the 200-yard individual medley (1:44.23, a school record) and 400-yard individual medley (3:44.92, 3rd fastest performer in UNC history), sophomore Sam Lewis in the 100-yard butterfly (46.43, 2nd fastest performer in UNC history) and junior Patrick Myers in the 200-yard backstroke (1:42.32, a school record).
Individual selections may also swim any other events in which they attained at least provisional standards during the course of the 2013-14 competitive season.
Freshman Jack Nyquist qualified to dive at the national meet in Austin after he tied for third place on the three-meter board this past Monday at the NCAA Zone B Diving Championships in Greensboro, N.C. He is the first Tar Heel diver to qualify for nationals since David MacDonald in 2012. MacDonald took home honorable mention All-America honors that year on the three-meter board.
Coach Rich DeSelm will also take a quartet of swimmers who will compete as alternates for relays. Three of those swimmers have already been designated – sophomore Nic Graesser, sophomore Kurt Wohlrab and sophomore Logan Heck. A fourth swimmer will be added to the squad for relay events at a later date.
Colley, Lewis, Graesser, Wohlrab and Heck all competed in the NCAA Championships a year ago as freshmen. Gianino and Myers will be first-time NCAA participants.
UNC attained times which makes it eligible to swim in all five relay events at the NCAA Championships. Carolina met a provisional standard in the 200-yard freestyle relay (1:18.43), a qualifying standard in the 400-yard medley relay (3:09.65), a qualifying standard in the 200-yard medley relay (1:25.80), a provisional standard in the 800-yard freestyle relay (6:24.58) and a provisional standard in the 400-yard freestyle relay (2:54.72).
This release was provided to SwimSwam courtesy of UNC Swimming and Diving.