In the past month, Garrick Moorman, Josh Rymiszewski, Chris Meidinger and Jonathan Fylstra have moved into the fast lane.

They constitute a Currituck 400 freestyle relay team that has whacked nearly 20 seconds off its time in that stretch and has earned the first trip to a 3A state meet for anybody in a Currituck swimsuit since 2009.

“And they can still knock a couple more seconds off, easily,” said Knights coach Susan Buzzard.

That’s not just a coach talking, either. The guys swimming those 100-yard legs believe they can do it.

“I know I can go faster, Josh can go faster, Jon has gotten his kick down and Chris has really picked up the pace,” said Moorman, a senior in only his second year of swimming. “Hopefully, we can take another seven seconds off.”

Which is just how many ticks the Knights slashed at last week’s region meet, where they finished 11th in a time of 3:50.89 to qualify for Thursday’s state meet at the Triangle Aquatic Center in Cary.

Rymiszewski, another senior, sees no reason to think Currituck can’t keep going faster.

“As we’re getting closer to the end, we’re working harder in practice and getting more used to our starts and encouraging each other,” he said. “When we see the people in front of us going faster, we try to go faster, too.”

During the regular season, Currituck swims most of its meets in races measured in meters. At regions and states, the competition is staged in yards, which makes every race shorter ... and thus, faster.

The change gave the Knights a psychological boost.

“When their qualifying times were converted from meters to yards, the faster times were affirming to them,” Buzzard said. “But after they actually raced, they realized they had a little more gas left because it wasn’t as far. Now they’re not holding anything back.”

“I don’t know the actual difference between them, but meters just sounds a lot further,” said Fylstra, a senior. “In meters you get used to how hard you have to push to the end and sometimes you have something left over.

“In yards, you go just go all out the whole time. It feels a lot faster.”

Although the team has raced together only three times, the Knights swimmers have an all-for-one and one-for-all bond that characterizes most good relays.

“Been there from Day One,” said Rymiszewski, who swam at Currituck as a sophomore, transferred to North Carolina School of Science and Math as a junior and returned this year. “The more we race together, the better we’re going to feel about each other.”

“We’re getting pretty close,” added Fylstra. “It’s a real brotherhood working together.”

One that Meidinger, the lone non-senior in the group, is thrilled to be a part of.

“This is a great chance for me,” said the junior. “Next year we may not be as good because our seniors are so good this year, so I’m trying to get as far as I can with these guys.”

Buzzard said the composition of this particular relay “has been different in almost every meet” because the seniors are so talented and versatile they could have pursued excellence in a number of events. But swimmers can participate in no more than four events in postseason competition, so a decision had to be made whether they would pursue individual or relay success.

“About halfway through the season they all came together and said they wanted to focus on getting the relays to states,” Buzzard said. “When they got out of the pool at regions they kept asking, ‘Are we in? Are we in?’ We had beaten everybody in the previous heat, so I knew we were at least top 12 (the state qualifying cutoff).

“They were really excited when I told them they made it.”

“This is the first time our school has gone in awhile, so it’s a pretty neat thing,” Meidinger said.

It’s also pretty neat the way the team has melded. Fylstra has been primarily a distance swimmer. Moorman is a track guy who says he “has been converted into a fish.” Meidinger passed on giving basketball a shot this winter. And Rymiszewski, perhaps the most serious swimmer, is doing extra workouts on the weekend because Currituck does not have its own pool and he isn’t getting the amount of time or intensity in practice that he did at NCSSM, which had better resources.

Buzzard has nothing but praise for all of them.

“Josh, we’re so glad to have him back,” she said. “It was like culture shock for him, but he’s been fantastic. Very unselfish.

“Jon, I can’t say enough about him. He’d always been in the 200 and 500 until this year. But in practice one day we were doing sprints and it was like, ‘Wow, Jon is a sprinter.’ He was there all along, we just never used him that way.

“Chris wanted to play basketball and I was going to work with him if he wanted to do both. But when push came to shove, he decided just to swim and I’m happy he did.

“Garrick came out as a junior and from the first meet he wanted to be on the relay teams. I told him he couldn’t do it unless he could go one-teens in the 100. The next meet, he did it and wanted to know if he was on relays yet. But other kids had done well, so I told him he had to do one-oh something. And he did that ... he’s been on the relays ever since. He’s one of those kids, you give him a time and he does it.”

And collectively ...

“It’s a great group of guys,” Buzzard said.