North Carolina State Proving Status as Elite Combined Program During CSL Competition
The traditional setup of college swimming measures success for women’s teams and men’s teams independently. For most of the sport’s history, the most successful programs operated under separate coaching staffs, a trend which only a handful of programs continue in 2026. Most teams rely on a combined staff, where one or more coaches remain on campus during single-gender championship meets to manage team members preparing for a different event, possibly just one week later.
The College Swimming League has marked a rare team-first competition scored collectively, where women’s events and men’s events contribute equally to the final outcome. That has given an opportunity for North Carolina State, a program with consistently strong results for the past decade, to stand out in a way the Wolfpack often cannot in single-gender competition.
Since head coach Braden Holloway took over the program in advance of the 2011-12 season, NC State has had its best stretch in program history. The program has combined for 11 ACC titles, nine for the men’s team and two for the women. The men’s team has placed top-10 at the NCAA Championships every season since 2015, and the women’s run in that realm goes back to 2009. The men have topped out at fourth place nationally, doing so on five different occasions, and the women earned a second-place national finish in 2021 before placing fifth the next two years.
NC State sprint standout Quintin McCarty — Photo Courtesy: Peter H. Bick
In the CSL, though, the Wolfpack have out-performed programs consistently more successful under traditional standards. NC State placed second behind Virginia in the team’s first CSL match, and in last week’s trip to the west coast, NC State defeated Indiana, Cal and Stanford to become the second team to clinch a spot in the league’s final match.
Yes, the same Indiana team that placed third at the NCAA Men’s Championships the last two years. The same Stanford team second at the women’s meet in 2025 and 2026. The same Cal team that strung together top-two finishes on the national level every year from 2010 through 2025 and has shown promise with the women’s team since becoming a combined program under the leadership of Dave Durden. NC State, whose men placed sixth at last year’s NCAA Championships and women ninth, outpaced all of those programs by comfortable margins.
On the women’s side, NC State’s standouts include juniors Leah Shackley and Erika Pelaez, both of whom have produced exceptional results in backstroke and butterfly over the past two seasons. Eneli Jefimova arrived from Estonia already a force in the sprint breaststroke events, but she has shown capabilities in the 200-yard event since coming to Raleigh. Lily Christianson and Lily King provide scoring punch in the freestyle events and depth for relay purposes.
Sprinter Quintin McCarty and backstroker/IMer Daniel Diehl are the most accomplished swimmers for the Wolfpack men, with both having represented the United States at the recent Pan Pacific Championships. McCarty won the 50 and 100 free in the latest CSL match while Diehl took first in the 200 back and 200 IM. Kaii Winkler scored top finishes in the 100 IM and 100 fly, and Max Carlsen, the latest in the program’s run of strong distance swimmers, took care of business in the 500 free.
Sprint depth has been a hallmark throughout Holloway’s time with the program, and that showed last weekend as NC State dominated the 200 free relay, got a wire-to-wire win in skins from Jerry Fox and won each round of the super skins medley relay
Those results secured the Wolfpack a ticket to Indianapolis, bypassing the wild card meet. They will compete against ACC rival Virginia, a program with the longest winning streak in college swimming history on the women’s side, plus two other opponents still to be determined. That’s good company, and this newly-created league includes most of the country’s top teams with the exceptions of Texas, Florida and Arizona State.
Thanks to the results NC State has put together through two CSL matches, a third-place finish final (or better) would be sufficient for the program to claim a spot as one of the country’s top-five teams overall. And given the talent on both sides of the roster, it could set up NC State for its best national performance in years this March.
