After a third-place finish at last year’s 3A swimming and diving state championships, the Northwood girls are expected to be among the top teams in the area again during the 2022-23 season.
The Chargers bring back tons of talent from last year’s team, including sisters Lauren and Abby Emrich. Abby, a sophomore, finished third in the 200-yard individual medley, fifth in the 100-yard butterfly and was part of the Northwood 200-yard freestyle relay team that placed second at last year’s state championships.
Lauren, now a senior, finished sixth in the 100-yard breaststroke and was a member of the Chargers’ foursome that finished second in the 200-yard medley relay at the state meet last February.
The Northwood girls felt like they could have finished even better at last year’s state championships. One thing holding back was the lack of a 400-yard freestyle relay team; the Chargers were controversially disqualified in that event in the regional finals the previous weekend after judges ruled senior Julia Earnshaw didn’t use her feet to push off the wall during her leg of the race.
The Chargers will have to replace some team members who graduated over the offseason. Northwood had a number of seniors contribute to last season’s success, including Mia Corrado, Gwen Hoeg and Earnshaw. All three swimmers were part of the team that finished second in the 200-yard medley relay.
“We’ve got a lot of different personalities, and we have a lot of really great attitudes about improvement,” Northwood head coach Rebecca Reed said. “Everybody is really receptive to feedback, supportive of each other, supportive of the team and happy to be there. They are a really good and awesome team to coach.”
The Northwood girls were the only Chatham County school to compete as a team at last year’s swimming and diving state championships. Northwood’s boys team didn’t make the state meet after finishing 14th at the 3A central regionals.
Jordan-Matthews finished 11th as a team at last year’s 1A/2A state championships, but that was because of a big performance from senior Jennah Fadely, who won the 100-yard breaststroke and finished second in the 200-yard intermedley.
Fadely graduated and is competing collegiately at Kenyon College in Ohio. This past summer, Fadely won a Division-III national title as a member of the Owls. She was part of two relay teams that won national championships, while she finished third in both the 100-yard breaststroke and the 200-yard breaststroke.
Sports Editor Jeremy Vernon can be reached at jeremy@chathamnr.com or on Twitter at @jbo_vernon.