The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
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24 ■ THE WOLFPACKER "The last 100 that Julia was doing in the freestyle, we were not standing still," Hansson confessed. "We were jumping and screaming. We were so in the moment. It was so cool." It would be just a preview of what was to come. On day three of the meet, Berkoff and Hansson were back in the pool swimming the first two legs of the 200 medley re- lay. Once again, Virginia was the top seed. Once again, Berkoff and Hansson helped NC State accumulate a lead of more than a second. Senior Sirena Rowe swam the butterfly and held the advantage, and Alons kept pace with Douglass' time in the free- style sprint on anchor. NC State just missed the NCAA record by 0.07 seconds and beat Virginia by 0.95 seconds. In the two races before that, Hansson had won the national title in the 100 breaststroke and Berkoff in the 100 backstroke. Three straight races and three national titles to end the night for NC State. "I told the ladies it was probably the big- gest moment in that new era since I got here, not just that first night when we broke the national record but the second night when we caught fire," Holloway said. "I started tearing up when we had dinner and started crying a little bit about how happy I was for them." "Winning that first relay gave us so much momentum going into the rest of the meet," Berkoff said. "It was just an awesome ex- perience, huge breakthrough for our team." NCAA Champion And Olympian Hansson is the younger sister of Louise Hansson, and both represented their native Sweden in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Louise helped show the way in college by winning back-to-back national titles in the 100 butterfly for USC in 2018 and 2019. Whereas Louise was good in not only the fly but also the free and back, the breast- stroke was not her specialty. It so happened for Sophie that proved to be a good stroke. "People were comparing us enough," Hansson remembered. "Breaststroke was going well for me, and it was also my stroke and not my sister's." Louise's success at USC made it evident to Sophie that she could be competitive in college, but it was a matter of finding the right school. She called narrowing down her list of options a matter of gut feel, and then came her visits. After connecting with Hol- loway, NC State was her choice. Moving to a new country was a huge ad- justment, more than just culturally. "It's a very different training," Hansson noted. "It took me a good eight months for my body to adjust. I'm used to training re- ally hard and getting some rest and recovery, in a cycle. In America you go hard all the time, and if your body is not used to that it could take a while to adjust." Hansson proved to be a quick study. She took third place in both the 100 and 200 breaststroke events as a freshman at the NCAA Championships behind a pair of se- niors after earlier becoming the first NC State swimmer since 1982 to win both races at the ACC Championships. She repeated her titles at the conference level in 2020 without even tapering, a pro- cess in which swimmers gear their training to maximize their fastest times for a meet, in anticipation of swimming at the NCAA Championships that never happened. The thought of using an Olympic redshirt to train for the summer games in Tokyo in 2021 was not appealing to her, but she was also unable to make it back to the States from Sweden until January. "Going into the NCAA I thought I was going to be really nervous considering I haven't raced a lot the previous year, but I was so grateful that I got a chance to race that I didn't want to get nervous," Hansson said. Her goal was to win the national title in the 100 breaststroke. In the prelims, she swam 57.67 seconds and was the only per- former under 58 seconds. In the finals that night, she stopped the clock in a pool-record 57.23 seconds. "When I touched and I turned around, the coaches were [in my eyesight] before the ac- tual scoreboard," Hansson said. "When I saw Braden completely jumping and screaming, I figured my hand was first to the wall. "I can't describe it. So much adrenaline, just so much joy." Since much of Hansson's training is geared to the 100 version of the race, win- ning the national title in the 200 was more of an added bonus than an ambition. "I was definitely more nervous for the 200," Hansson confessed. "It's a longer race, and it takes more out of your body, espe- cially doing it twice in a day. That morning swim hurt way more than I wanted it to. That definitely did not help with my nerves for the night." Junior Sophie Hansson won a pair of individual national championships (100 breaststroke and 200 breaststroke), becoming just the second to do so in NC State history, male or female, and the first since 1956. PHOTO COURTESY NC STATE ATHLETICS