The Wolfpacker: An Independent Magazine Covering NC State Sports
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1497827
26 ■ THE WOLFPACKER Will Gallant Goes The Distance Gallant tried multiple sports before coming around to swimming in the 10th grade. He even was an ice hockey player, mostly finding himself on the right wing. That's not to say that Gallant was a newcomer to swimming. He did summer swimming leagues starting at around 8 years old, but from a competitive stand- point, Gallant confirmed, "I was a late bloomer, for sure." Yet as he trained more frequently and started to grow, and as the distances started getting longer, Gallant noticed some serious time drops within a few years. So, he took a year after competing as a freshman at Indiana to train in Cali- fornia with renowned swimming coach Mark Schubert in hope of making the de- layed 2020 Olympics in Tokyo. Gallant then decided he needed to go to a college with an established long-dis- tance swimming program. Enter NC State. In 2018, former Wolf- pack swimmer Anton Ipsen had won the 1,650 free, also known as the mile, at NC State. Furthermore, Pack assistant coach Mark Bernardino is well-regarded for his distance swimming training. "Coming here, I knew someone had done all the things that I wanted to ac- complish, so it can be done," Gallant noted. Distance swimming became Gallant's clear forte in the sport. Speed is not his strength. The junior from Collinsville, Conn., joked that without the longer races, he wouldn't even be on the team. To reach his highest aspirations at the NCAA Championships, Gallant needed to find a bit of tranquility on race day. "I kind of get super nervous," he said. "I get really stressed out. I'm really good in practice, but a lot of times in meets I'll get really stressed out, and I won't perform the way that I want to." On March 25, the day of the NCAA championship in the mile, Gallant felt calmer than normal. A good week of sleep, which he admitted "usually doesn't happen," certainly helped. What's unique about the 1,650 free is that there are no prelims, and the race is divided into heats, with the top seeds reserved for the final one. That included Gallant, who saw Texas junior David Johnston sprint out to an early lead. At one point, Johnston was more than 3 sec- onds in front of Gallant, but by the mid- way point of the race that advantage had already begun to shrink. Johnston's 50 splits slipped to slower than 27 seconds. Gallant was consistently hitting his marks, hovering between 26.5 and 26.75 seconds. "I think around the 700 mark is when I realized I got this," Gallant recalled. There was still the matter of control- ling those nerves, especially in a race that featured 66 trips from one end to another. "I don't know if I did a great job," Gal- lant confessed. "I feel like I could have gone faster, to be honest. I definitely lost a little focus. At like 1,200, 1,350, 1,400, by that point I was alone in my heat. I knew I wasn't going to lose to anybody." Making the race doubly sweet is that Gallant's fellow distance swimmer, senior Ross Dant, who swam in a prior heat, eas- ily posted the second-fastest time, pro- viding a 1-2 finish for NC State. Fortunately, Dant was also there to help Gallant, who in an excited hurry to get to the post-race TV interview struggled to put his pants on over his swimming suit. Viewers on live television watched as Gal- lant finally got them up — backwards. ■ Hayes' goal is to compete in the 2024 Olympic Games, but in the meantime, he's focused on maximizing his opportunity at NC State. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP Gallant is better known for his stamina than his speed. Distance events like the 1,650-yard freestyle play to his strengths as a swimmer. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP