CHAPEL HILL — By the time Julie Doran was standing on the board ready to complete her last dive at Koury Natatorium Friday, she was trailing only No. 1-seeded Providence diver Jenna Moore.

With that final dive — a one-and-a-half somersault into a pike with a 2.4 difficulty — she was able to take the championship.

By half a point.

When the announcer prefaced the first- and second-place results by pointing out the score differential, Doran suddenly froze.

Other divers, who already had heard their own names, looked toward her, eyes wide.

“My heart was just pounding,” Doran said. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

What happened was that Doran’s last dive had been enough to propel her to the top with 454.25 points, giving the Holly Springs sophomore her second straight NCHSAA 4-A state diving championship.

She won’t say dynasty yet, though.

“We’ll see what happens,” she laughed. “It’s just a lot of fun.”

Doran added several new tricks to her bag for this championship, additions her coach, Tamara Cole, said helped her nab the title.

“She worked on a little more harder dives, and actually it came out that that’s what she needed in the end,” Cole said.

Doran followed Moore in the diving order the entire meet, so she had to hear and respond to her scores throughout the night.

Each time Moore finished a dive, Doran was standing on an adjacent board, applauding Moore’s performance as she awaited her own turn.

On five of her last six dives, Doran was able to match or better Moore’s scores, leading to her come-from-behind victory.

“[Doran] did just great,” Cole said. “There was a lot of really stiff competition in states tonight, and sure enough, it came down to the last dive.”

Doran was seeded third going into the finals, behind Moore and North Mecklenburg’s Ashley Kopec, who finished third.

Amanda MacCreery, a junior from Green Hope, placed fourth with 368.5 points.

Apex senior Kerri Sackmann was 14th with 268.7 points, and Cary senior Katie Gibbs took 21st place with 234.55 points.

For the boys, Green Hope junior Bryant Wooten finished fifth with 374.8 points, and Apex freshman Lucas Hayes, Green Hope’s Bradley Burk and Apex’s Jamie Haigh finished 18th, 19th and 22nd, respectively.