The Blue Devils have rewritten their record books once again.
Duke continued its season of speed at the three-day Wolfpack Elite GAC Invitational in Greensboro. Swimmers cruised past the competition — which included Arizona, Arizona State, Northwestern, Virginia Tech, N.C. State and Army — and dropped three new school records in the process.
Friday’s finals kicked off with a tense battle for the 200-yard medley relay title, pitting the Blue Devils against the Sun Devils and the Wolfpack until the last leg. Though Arizona State’s Caroline Bentz ultimately pulled ahead in the freestyle to claim the win — and turnover pressure led Duke to a false-start DQ — the Blue Devils redeemed themselves throughout the evening.
Kaelyn Gridley dove into the 100-yard breaststroke with a first-seed prelims time of 59.20. Several competitors followed closely on her heels, but in one of the meet’s closest races — with places two through five separated by a mere 0.18 milliseconds — Duke’s junior grabbed a decisive gold by nearly two seconds. Her first-place time of 58.59 also broke the one-month-old school record, recently set against South Carolina.
Not more than 10 minutes later, Ali Pfaff delivered another record rewrite. Her 100-yard backstroke time of 51.48 beat out her previous record from last year’s NCAA Championships. The sophomore’s close sprint at the end of the race earned her a second-place finish in the event, with teammates Molly Donlan and Claire Logan following behind to tie for fifth.
Junior Yannis Schattman brought home the hardware for the men’s team a few yards to the left of the competition pool, flipping to second place on the one-meter board with a score of 346.30. A pair of younger Blue Devils — sophomore Charles Berman and freshman Tynan O’Donogue — dove to fifth and sixth place, respectively.
Then came Saturday night’s finals, which brought similarly electric energy to the pool deck. Pfaff began the session in the women’s 200-yard backstroke by taking down a third school record with a time of 1:51.55. Her fourth-place finish was followed by Jacob Hills’ eighth-place 1:43.84 mark for the men.
Kaelyn Gridley once again dominated in breaststroke, commanding the 200-yard final by a four-second margin. Her 2:05.71 in the event began with a half-second lead that grew longer with each passing length of the pool. Sophomore Kalen Anbar dove in afterwards to take seventh place for the men in a close race with two N.C. State swimmers.
Sommerstad and Peroni racked up medals of their own in the 200-yard butterfly. Once again, the two teammates found the fiercest competition in each other — touching the wall milliseconds apart with a respective 1:57.17 and 1:57.38 for gold and silver. Tatum Wall notched second place in the 100-yard freestyle with a new best time of 48.47, while the 400-yard freestyle relay concluded the meet with a fourth-place finish.
Thursday’s competition had highlights in the finals session as well. A thundering 50-yard freestyle race saw Wall clinch first place with a time of 21.79 — exactly one millisecond faster than the Sun Devils’ Bentz, who finished in 21.80. The Blue Devils then earned themselves an NCAA A cut in the women’s 400-yard medley relay, with Pfaff, Gridley, Aleyna Ozkan and Wall taking second place by a clean margin.
Margo O’Meara clinched first place in the three-meter Thursday night with an A-finals total of 349.85, while freshman Keira Lu jumped to fourth. The duo went on to finish first and second in Friday’s one-meter finals with scores of 326.10 and 290.00. Saturday saw O’Meara return to the platform event for the first time in two years — and the junior grabbed a third-place, 250.30-point finish. Charles Berman ended the meet with a 316.80 on the platform and bronze of his own.
Several other Duke swimmers tabbed notable finishes over the weekend. Sommerstad and Peroni found themselves in a tight A-final race of the 400-yard IM, finishing fourth and fifth respectively. Wall and Yixuan Chang ended the 200-yard freestyle in fourth and sixth. Thursday night’s 500-yard freestyle race also saw Chang take 10th in with a 4:48.59.
Though the men’s swimmers might not have found as much podium success as the women, they earned program accolades of their own. Yugo Tsukikawa, a graduate student transfer from Michigan, delivered the fifth-best 400-yard IM time in Duke’s history by posting a 3:51.92 in the event. Charles Morici, also a former Wolverine, placed himself eighth on the program-best list for the men’s 100-yard butterfly with a time of 47:00. Several men also secured top-20 finishes and delivered strong B-final races over the course of the three evenings.
In the end, the women’s 1,287 total points earned them a fourth-place finish, while the men recorded 787 for fifth. Duke now has a week off before it returns to Greensboro Dec. 5 for the start of the U.S. Open.
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Abby DiSalvo is a Trinity sophomore and assistant Blue Zone editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.