NC State’s swimming and diving team hosted its fifth annual Wolfpack Games for Alumni Weekend at Willis R. Casey Aquatic Center on Friday night.
The night opened with a video flash forwarding through all the years that the Wolfpack made history, including its 33 ACC titles.
In the spirit of Alumni Weekend, champions from both years past and current members of the team would make appearances throughout the night including Hannah Moore, Mackenzie Glover and Andreas Vazaios. All three were 2019 champions. Moore placed third in open water in the World Championship. Vazaios was a National Champion in the 200 Butterfly. And Glover finished third in the Pan American Games for the 200-m backstroke.
Also between events, the Wolfpack 2019 champion team was brought out along with video footage of its accomplishments from last season.
The first event to get the Pack started was Mini Open Water, a relay of two teams that swam around three large balloons but the twist was in order for the next set to go, a wet shirt had to be passed on. The grey shirt team had some difficulty in the beginning with trading its shirt and would settle for it hanging around the swimmers’ neck.
The second event was the Diving Circus. Using both the low and high diving boards along with the beams, the divers would perform one dive after the other.
Freshman Bayne Bennet getting the crowd wild with his ability to jump pretty high before diving into the pool.
Before each event, the players who would be participating would be introduced after an alumni introduction or a championship recognition.
The third event was the Hail Mary Flop. Two teams would alternate turns of jumping off the diving block and try to catch a football that was thrown to them before hitting the water. The event started off a little rocky with neither team being able to even reach the ball. Soon enough, the audience was in loud cheers as one participant after another would successfully catch the football before diving into the pool. The score was tied until the very end when the last swimmer on the second team failed to catch the ball, ending the event.
Following the Hail Mary Flop was the Hypoxic Challenge. Five lanes were set up and participants would jump off the diving block with flippers and swim to the end of the lane before coming back to complete the race. At the end of both heats, the times were placed on the board with the fastest being 16.81 but it was unclear as to who the time belonged to.
The Wolfpack was also proud to announce the members of the Pack who are a part of the U.S. National team such as Katharine Berkoff, Eric Knowles, Makayla Sargent, Elise Haan, Ryan Held, Hannah Moore and Justin Ress.
The next event was Tug of War. As the name suggests, swimmers played a classic game of tug of war. Two swimmers, tied together by a rope around the waist would begin in the middle of a pool lane before swimming in opposite directions in an attempt to reach the wall first.
The sixth and final event of the night was the 200 medley relay. Only two teams competed but and as standard, the teams started out with the backstroke, the next swimmer goes into a breaststroke followed by the butterfly and ending with freestyle.
After a fun beginning to the season, the Wolfpack has a month left until its season opener against South Carolina on Friday, Oct. 25. Diving will begin at 3 p.m. followed by swimming at 4 p.m. at Willis R. Casey Aquatic Center.
