NC State 200 Medley Relay DQ’ed at the ACC Championships, Leaving Florida State With a Big Win

ATLANTIC COAST CONFERENCE CHAMPIONSHIPS

• Dates:
  • Diving: Sunday, February 15–Tuesday, February 17
  • Swimming: Tuesday, February 17–Saturday, February 21
• Location: McAuley Aquatic Center, Atlanta, GA
• Defending champions: UVA women (6x); Cal men (1x)
• Live Results
• Live Video: ESPN+ ($)
• Schedule of Events (PDF)
• Championship Central
• Pre-Scratch Psych Sheet
• Teams: Boston College, Cal, Duke, Florida State, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Miami (women swimming & diving/men diving), NC State, North Carolina, Notre Dame, Pittsburgh, SMU, Stanford, Virginia, Virginia Tech

Relay scoring is rarely the determining factor in the final team standings. at conference championship meets.

That is, unless, there is a DQ. A DQ can turn that relatively-small 2 or 8 point gap between scoring into a massive 50-60 point gap.

That made a disastrous start to the men’s swimming portion of the 2026 ACC Championships, where there were three relays disqualified: including the would-be champions in the event from NC State.

The Wolfpack quartet touched first in 1:21.83, which was .45 seconds ahead of Florida State. 5th year Aiden Hayes left .09 seconds early on the team’s butterfly leg, where even a mediocre changeover time would have still been enough for the win.

They were joined in the DQ column by Virginia, a program under a microscope at these championships given the number of future potential US Olympians in their freshman class, who touched in 1:23.10. They were the 7th-best finishing relay (including behind NC State).

UNC was the other disqualified relay, after stopping the clock in 1:24.44. That was 11th in the initial rankings before the relays were disqualified.

That left the men of Florida State, the Cinderellas of the 2025-2026 season, to claim their first ACC relay title since 2020. The team of Max Wilson (20.64), Tommaso Baravelli (23.21), Michel Arkhangelskiy (19.41), and Sam Bork (19.02) safely touched in 1:22.28, holding off furious anchor legs from Cal sophomore Lucca Battaglini and Louisville freshman Nikita Sheremet. Those two relays were .11 and .12 back at the final touch.

Florida State swam 1:21.60 in this relay at NCAAs last year.

Florida State was once the toast of the sprinting story under head coach Neil Harper. Another Englishman, Neal Studd, is rebuilding that reputation – just as he did when he founded the women’s program at Florida Gulf Coast. There, he had one of the more successful runs in mid-major history, including leading a 200 medley relay to an 8th place finish at the NCAA Championships.

Florida State last won this relay at the ACC Championships in 2014.

In what is expected to be a competitive ACC Championship meet, this gives the Cal men a big boost in their quest to win a second-consecutive title in spite of not being nearly as good as they were last year.

Florida State probably isn’t deep enough, nor do they have the diving, to keep pace in the overall standings, though they have lots of other chances to turn heads this week.

Louisville got a good performance from their divers and took the lead after this event, while Stanford is still in the mix as well.

For Virginia, this will add a little more fuel onto the fire; though the Cavaliers were always going to be an ‘NCAA focused’ team that isn’t deep enough to contend for the overall crown at the conference meet. Still, a slide down the rankings here will serve to further ramp up the pressure back in this same pool in March. With no divers, they’re already in a 3 athlete deficit at this meet, and go in to the 800 free relay with no points.

This will especially sting for a UNC team that has had a really good year and had an angle at their best conference finish in a long time.

There is still a lot of meet to swim, and a ton of position to jockey for, but this 200 medley really changed the complexion of the team battles this week.