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The Daily Tar Heel

UNC diving steps up for both men's and women's teams

“It has to be.

“We won the women’s meet,” he said. “It wasn’t pretty, but we won it. We didn’t win the men’s meet. The takeaway is we have to be better for having gone through both of those experiences: a win and a loss. We have to be better and better prepared next time out. Otherwise we are not learning from our experiences.”

The Tar Heels traveled to Louisville for a two-day dual meet against the Cardinals that took place Friday night and Saturday morning. The women’s team, although down by one point after Friday’s events, went on to win the meet 194-159, while the men struggled throughout the weekend, losing 220-133.

Junior Emma Nunn, who took first in both the 500- and 1000-yard freestyles, said the team had to adjust because the meet was unfamiliar territory for North Carolina.

“It was a combination of a lot of things, but I think most of it was that in the events we weren’t going to win, we had to be two, three, four,” Nunn said. “We had to get behind each other and be enthusiastic and not let it scare us because we have had such an amazing season — it was bizarre not to be, for once, gliding through it.”

Despite the men’s loss, the divers pulled their weight and won all of the events.

Sophomore Jack Nyquist took first place in both the one-meter and three-meter, scoring 342.37 and 423.82 respectively. Freshman Elissa Dawson had the same results in women’s diving, grabbing two firsts and scoring 323.48 and 384.08.

Nyquist said having competitive teammates helps everyone.

“Elissa Dawson and Michole Timm are both incredible female divers,” Nyquist said. “They are some of the best in the country, for sure. Seeing (Elissa) have success, seeing Michole have success, drives me to want more.”

“Everyone is in it to win it, for sure. There’s not a face on the team that doesn’t think they can make conference, make NCAAs.”

DeSelm and Nunn both stated that depth was a key to the UNC women’s success.

“I think going into it we knew that Louisville had a lot of superstars, but I think we were surprised the first day at how much deeper they were than we thought they were,” Nunn said.

“Not that they were deeper than us, but they were pretty formidable.”

DeSelm said it made the difference.

“On the second day, I think our depth pretty much overtook the competition,” DeSelm said.

“Louisville is really good, but we were just deeper. In a dual meet, the depth does count for a lot, and we were able to come out victorious.”

sports@dailytarheel.com

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