Timing. Familiarity. Technique. Awareness.
All of those ingredients are prerequisites for a good swimming relay team. Many of the competitors for the Orange swimming team have grown up together on various club teams, like the Hillsborough Aquatic Club and Eastern Carolina Aquatics.
Those relay teams are what paved the way for the Orange men’s and women’s swim teams to do something unprecedented in school history.
Orange swept the men’s and women’s titles at the Central Carolina Conference Championships at the Orange County Sportsplex on Wednesday night.
The Orange men successfully defended its championship from last year with 446 points. Eastern Alamance finished second at 248 points.
The Orange women won the CCC Championship with 339 points, barely beating out Cedar Ridge for second. The Red Wolves registered 332 points.
Combining the men’s and women’s competitions, Orange took the gold medal in four of the five relay races. The Orange women’s team of Katie Bells Sikes, Riley White, Piper White and Ainsley Rasinske won both the 200 yard medley relay and the 400 yard freestyle relay.
It was another night where Sikes walked out with more hardware than Ace Hardware. Sikes, a junior who committed to swim at the University of Georgia last October, came away with four gold medals. Individually, she earned two gold medals, setting school records in both events. She took the 100 freestyle at 52.04 seconds. In the 100 yard backstroke, Sikes won at 59.03 seconds, six seconds ahead of Eastern Alamance’s Braylee Carter.
Last year, Sikes won two gold, one silver and one bronze medal at the CCC Championships.
This year, the relay success led to the Orange women going from a 4th place finish in 2022 to a conference championship this year.
“It definitely takes a lot of practice,” Sikes said about relay teams. “The relay starts are super important. You definitely don’t want to get disqualified for jumping too early, but the faster you jump in the better. Since we all know each other, we all swam on a club team together, we’ve grown pretty accustomed to how we swim.”
In addition to Sikes’ success, junior Riley White won three gold medals. Along with the relay victories, White won the 50 yard freestyle at 25.54 seconds. Abi Robinson of Walter Williams finished second. It was White’s first individual gold medal. White also had a silver medal in the 100 yard butterfly. Abigail Emrich of Northwood claimed the gold with a time of 59.30 seconds.
Freshman Piper White earned a silver medal in the 200 yard freestyle. She finished at 2:07.29, behind only Cedar Ridge’s Sophia Stinnett.
Orange’s men’s relay team of Luke Roman, Evan Phillips, Alex Andre and Andrew Weeks claimed the gold medal in the 200 yard medley relay. In the 200 yard freestyle relay, Orange’s Greyson Brummer, Rylan Brummer, Ayden Twiddy and Nick Baczara finished first at 1:53.31.
Orange nearly had a clean sweep of the relay races. In the final event of the night, the 400 yard freestyle relay, the Panther team led the whole race until Northwood’s Wiley Sikes swam a great anchor leg to beat out the Panthers and win the gold. Sikes, Christian Smith Pumalpa, Morgan Turner and Jesse Sikes finished at 3:38.55. Orange came in at 3:39.61.
Roman and Phillips both had three gold medals and one silver medal.
Roman, a sophomore, repeated as champion of the 500 yard freestyle in a race where his nearest competitor was his teammate, Alex Andre. Roman came in at 4:54.40. This year, Roman also won the gold medal in the 100 yard freestyle, a race he didn’t even compete in during last year’s conference championship. Roman touched the wall at 53.97 seconds, beating out Tigue Hipps of Western Alamance.
As a freshman in 2022, Roman won three gold medals and a silver in the CCC Championships.
Phillips, in his final competitive meet inside the Orange County Sportsplex, captured gold in the 50 yard freestyle, finishing at 22.78 seconds. He held off Cedar Ridge junior Nikhil Agans for first place.
In the 100 yard breaststroke, Phillips earned the top spot at 1:05.07. Jesse Sikes of Northwood finished second.
Andre came away with three silver medals, along with the gold medal in the 200 relay. He came in second in the 500 yard freestyle (behind Roman) and the 200 yard freestyle.
Baczara earned one silver medal and one bronze medal. He finished second in the 200 yard individual medley at 2:22.30. He also finished third in the 100 yard butterfly at 1:02.09. Northwood’s Sikes captured the gold medal.