Freshman Max Carlsen Breaks NC State School Record, Building on Program’s Distance Tradition

It would be easy to view the NC State Wolfpack men as a sprint program. Their sprint record books are littered with big names like Ryan Held and Quintin McCarty and David Curtiss and Justin Ress and more recently Kaii Winkler.

The top 10 performers in school history in the 50 free are all 19.00-or-better.

But the NC State men have another distinction over the last decade: they have scored more points in the men’s 1650 free at the last 10 NCAA Championship meets combined than any other school in Division I.

That’s more than Florida, current home of swimmers like Katie Ledecky and Bobby Finke. That’s more than Michigan, which had a dominant distance program in the 2010s. More than Texas, the dominant program in that period; Cal, their usual foil; or Indiana, where the distance success has been fairly recent.

While head coach Braden Holloway has remained the same throughout that run, the distance program has seen a trio of high profile distance coaches roll through.

Gary Taylor led the distance group from 2012 until 2018. When he left to take over as the head coach at Auburn, Holloway brought in distance coaching legend Mark Bernardino, the longtime head coach at Virginia.

And now, after Bernardino’s retirement and with a staff loaded with distance experience including Dan Kesler, the tradition is carrying forward – in spite of graduating two of their three fastest milers after last season.

On Friday, freshman Max Carlsen broke the school record of all of those distance swimming legends of prior years in the 1000 free, swimming 8:42.38 to clear the old mark of 8:43.60 set in 2024 by Lance Norris.

Carlsen has also been 14:44.52 in the 1650 free this season, and Norris returns after scoring 4 points in the mile at NCAAs.

While Carlsen’s swims aren’t in NCAA scoring territory yet, they’re trending rapidly in that direction. He has dropped 18 seconds in the 1650 free this season, and after Friday, 15 seconds in the 1000 free.

Scoring Over the Last 10 NCAA Championships, 1650 Free

1. NC State – 207
2. Florida – 172
3. Texas – 137
4. Michigan – 144
5. Georgia – 119
6. Cal – 109
7. Indiana – 86

Note: these were hand-compiled and target-counted based on teams we expected to have high point totals. Is there a team we missed? Let us know in the comments, and we’ll do the math and see where they stand.