GREENSBORO, N.C. — With the entire ACC conference clustered onto a single pool deck, energy rippled through the Greensboro Aquatic Center. The five-day cacophony of competition seemed to quiet only for the occasional sound of a starting whistle as Virginia and California took home the ACC Swimming and Diving Championship titles.
Duke walked away from the meet with a 11th-place finish for the women and 12th-place finish for the men. Several Blue Devil swimmers earned new cuts for the NCAA Championships, while divers flipped to impressive finishes from Greensboro’s springboards. The dozens of Olympians and NCAA record-holders sharing the pool deck pushed seemingly every competitor to new speeds.
“Iron sharpens iron,” junior sprinter Tatum Wall said of the competition.
Junior Kaelyn Gridley delivered the only podium finish of the competition when she raced her way to a gold-medal finish in the women’s 100-yard breaststroke. The Wilmette, Ill., native, who qualified for finals with a second-seed 59.02, stepped up for the championship swim.
Matched stroke for stroke with Olympic gold medalist Emma Weber of Virginia, Gridley hit the second of three turns just .06 seconds behind. It was anyone’s race; by the last 25 yards, the entire heat formed a straight line across the eight lanes. In the end, however, Gridley claimed the ACC title at 58.23, finishing just .04 seconds ahead of Weber and .40 seconds before North Carolina’s Skyler Smith in third.
“I’m so proud to be here representing Duke,” Gridley said. “I love racing the breaststrokers. There’s so many top-tier girls in that event, and I love doing it and racing with them.”
With the finish, Gridley became the first Duke swimmer to win an individual ACC title since Leah Goldman in the 2017-18 season. She also finished the next night with a fifth-place finish in the women’s 200-yard breaststroke, posting a 2:07.71 just a quarter-second behind Weber.
Ali Pfaff made waves of her own when she broke her school record for the fourth time, dropping a 51.11 in the 100-yard backstroke prelims to qualify for finals with a seventh seed. In the A-final, the sophomore faced off against an all-star heat, including NCAA record-holder and Olympic gold medalist Gretchen Walsh. In a sprint to the finish, Pfaff placed seventh overall with a 51.29, only .18 seconds off her previous best.
The Lexington, Va., native opened Saturday’s events with a 1:53.21 200-yard backstroke, earning her an 11th-place seed and a spot in the B finals. She improved on her performance at finals — a difficult thing to do in the last session of a grueling five-day meet — to place ninth overall with a 1:52.05.
Senior Margo O’Meara also racked up valuable points for the Blue Devils when she took sixth-place in the 1-meter dive, posting a final score of 293.90 to move up one spot from her seventh-place prelims seed. Her best dive of the night was a forward 2 ½ somersault pike, which earned a score of 54.60 off a 2.60 degree of difficulty. On Thursday, O’Meara flipped to a fourth-place finals finish with a 366.15 on the 3-meter platform. Her third round dive — a reverse 2 ½ somersault pike — scored 76.50.
The men seemed to drop time with each race. Charles Morici led his prelims heat of the 200-yard butterfly at the halfway turn with a 48.70 split, racing Virginia Tech’s Carl Bloebaum all the way from lane eight. Though the two ended the race neck-in-neck, Morici ultimately touched in second with a new best time of 1:44.62. It earned him a 26th-place finish and first-alternate spot just outside of the C-final.
Sophomore Jack Smith missed the 200-yard breaststroke finals with a 30th-place finish, though the 1:58.07 was also a personal best for the Charlottesville, Va., native. Kalen Anbar followed close behind in 36th at 1:59.29.
Michael Jiang improved on his seed time in the 200-yard IM by nearly one and a half seconds to finish 38th. Andrew Li finished 45th in the same event with a 1:48.14, one place and one millisecond ahead of freshman teammate Samir Elkassem.
“We saw our men's team show a tremendous amount of improvement over the first two days of this meet,” head coach Brian Barnes said after Wednesday’s races.
Tynan O’Donague snagged 16th in the 3-meter dive for the men with a 313.55, scoring 61.62 in the second round off his forward 2 ½ somersault two-twist pike. The freshman also took 23rd in the men’s 1-meter dive with a 263.65.
On Wednesday, the women’s 200-yard freestyle relay team of Wall, KyAnh Truong, Pfaff and Clare Logan sprinted its way to a school record and NCAA cut, dropping a 1:28.26 to finish in eighth-place. It was Logan’s third 50-yard freestyle sprint of the day. The freshman from Westfield, N.J., had tied for 25th in the prelims of the individual event with a time of 22.42 seconds, only to miss the first-alternate spot by 0.10 seconds in her swimoff. She delivered on the anchor opportunity instead, outtouching three other teams within half a second to bring Duke’s relay home.
“Claire had an unbelievable day between her prelims, a swim-off and then anchoring our 200-free relay that qualified for NCAA,” Barnes said. “I know the value of the experience she got today. It's tremendous. It'll set her up for future challenges.”
Truong swam the 50-yard freestyle shortly after, having snuck into the C-final after tying for 23rd-place in prelims. She made the opportunity count, posting a new best time of 22.23 seconds to move into 18th-place. The senior also showed up and showed out with a dominant win in the 100-yard freestyle prelims. Truong dropped nearly a second from her personal best time of 49.40 to swim a fiery 48.56 in prelims, but ended in 24th-place with a 49.12 at finals.
Wall took eighth in the 50-yard freestyle finals with a time of 21.95 seconds, one spot behind her seventh-place seed from the morning. The Olympic Trials qualifier finished at 11th-place in the prelims of her signature 100-yard freestyle, swimming a 48.16 and earning her a spot in the B finals. The Ashburn, Va., native closely matched her prelims time in finals, swimming a 48.11 to end at a 12th-place finish.
Graduate student Kyra Sommerstad fought to the end in the 200-yard butterfly C-final. The race was dominated by outside smoke, with Cal’s Elizabeth Cook leading in lane seven. The Ohio State transfer pulled ahead to touch third at the 150-yard mark, but ultimately placed fifth in the heat and 21st overall with a 1:57.80. In the 400-yard individual medley, Sommerstad swam a 4:13.52 in prelims, putting her at 15th on the leaderboard. At finals, Sommerstad improved to a 4:12.35 season best.
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Adding Stanford, Cal and SMU to the mix of ACC competition meant that Duke recorded a lower team finish than past years. The Blue Devils still stepped up to the challenge across the board.
“It's a significant change to an already awesome conference,” Barnes said. “This is as good of a meet as it gets, in terms of conference championships.”
Abby DiSalvo is a Trinity sophomore and assistant Blue Zone editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.