Toledo, Ohio - The Toledo women's swimming and diving team opens its season this Friday with a tri-meet against Findlay and Indianapolis. The meet starts at 5:00 p.m. at the University of Toledo Student Rec Center and will be televised live on ESPN3. 

Head coach Jonas Persson sat down to preview the season and talk about what he expects from his program heading into the year. The women's swimming and diving team heads into the 2018-19 campaign following a breakout year that saw the team earn numerous accolades.

2017-18 Recap
Toledo's individual swimmers appeared on the conference top-10 list 11 times, and Toledo's relay teams finished in the top-four on four occasions. Toledo finished sixth at the Mid-American Conference Championships with 254 points—a 14 point improvement over the previous year, and the program's best finish in five years. Led by a core of freshmen and sophomores, 91 percent of Toledo's points at the tournament came from underclassmen. The Rockets also celebrated sophomore Izzy Jones being selected second-team All-MAC, recorded eight new entries onto the program's all-time top-10 list, and set nine new personal records at the MAC tournament.
 
UT swimmers earned eight NCAA B-Cuts, 71 new personal-best times, and 25 new entries into the program's all-time top-10 list as a whole during the 2017-18 season. Following the MAC meet, seven of Persson's student-athletes were invited to the 2018 CSCAA National Invitational as well, where senior Allison Dicke set two personal bests and freshman Alida Ramden earned one. Toledo was also named to the CSCAA Scholar All-America Team for the third consecutive semester (Fall '17), and seven Rockets were named to the Academic All-MAC team.
 
Persson credits last year's highs to his student-athletes buying into the new culture he and assistant coaches Leah Neiheisel and Gabby Agostino are building. Persson prefers to operate with a hands-off approach that leaves the squad responsible for setting and executing team expectations.
 
"They all really bought in to what we're trying to do training wise and with our culture," Persson said. "Our meet schedule was really hard last year and they all bought into it. It was a tough year, it was a long season, and I think we wanted to prove ourselves a little bit. We had, and still have, a lot of talent on our team so we wanted to go out and really show it. We dealt with some injuries and some sickness in the most important phases of the season so it was hard, but I think we did fairly well last year. We learned from our mistakes and we keep on building a great culture on the team, and it's even better this year."

Changing Culture 
The main driving points behind Toledo's growing culture are the team veterans. The Rockets have six team captains in seniors Bailey Cahill, Jessica Avery and Danielle Forbes, juniors Corinne Harris and Maureen O'Sullivan, and sophomore Emma Sampson. Each captain was selected by their teammates in a questionnaire process that measured everything from their confidence in the pool, to their relationship with their coaches. In the end, these six stood out as the team's leaders.
 
"It was clear that these six need to be the captains," Persson said. "It was a pretty thorough process, and it all made sense in the end. I think that system is working out pretty well this year, and that kind of goes back to the culture that the girls have taken. They have taken charge of their responsibilities and they feel ownership in what we're doing here."
 
Leading the captains is Cahill, whose distinct character made her the number-one choice amongst her teammates. Cahill will enter the season as the main liaison between the coaching staff, the captains, and the rest of the team.
 
"Bailey's in charge of our training standards, our meet standards, and how we approach a meet or competition," Persson said. "She has grown tremendously over the last three years, and if anyone asked 'who should be captain?' it would be Bailey. She has a good relationship with everyone on the team, she works hard, she races hard, and she does things the right way. She focuses on herself first, which we want, and she cares about the team as a whole just as much as she cares about her own career."
 
Persson will look to Cahill and the rest of the captains to get the team into the right mindset early on and ready to achieve this year's goals. Following UT's impressive athletic and academic 2017-18 season, Persson hopes to continue to grow into a conference powerhouse that excels in and out of the water.
 
"We want to make sure that freshmen feel included in our culture, that they're a part of it, and that they can put their print on it," Persson said. "We want to have over a 3.5 GPA as a team. Swimming-wise, we want to take another step up in the conference meet. It's a natural goal to want to go from sixth to fifth, and I think moving up one spot every year is a very realistic goal for our team. We want to have NCAA-B cuts so that we can make the National Invitational for the College Coaches Invitational, and also possibly have someone qualify for NCAAs."
 
Depth in Divers
A big strength for Toledo for the first time since Persson took over is depth in divers. The Rockets have four divers going into the year, with three expected to contribute from day one. The Rockets struggled at dual meets in previous seasons because they were unable to earn points in the diving portion of meets. That should change with the additions of freshmen Joelle Gallais and Sydney Jackson, along with the return of sophomore Elayna Yoskovich. Additionally, Forbes, who sat out last season due to injury, is expected to return to the water sometime toward the end of November.
 
"If you don't have divers for a dual meet you're losing something like 30 points, so it's just hard to win," Persson said. "If you're looking at a conference meet, I think Bowling Green beat us by 70 points, and about 40 or 50 of those points came from diving. Our swimmers are better this year and we have divers now so I think we're going to be able to go and compete more adequately. Having divers definitely adds to the team big-time."
 
With the roster filled and the start of the new season around the corner, Persson and the Rockets will look to have another standout season while aiming to become the first UT squad since 2012 to finish above fifth place in the conference.
 
"I think this is the best team in my three years," Persson said. "The medley relays are going to be fun to see, especially because our second-best relay is going to be almost as fast as our fastest team. I'm also excited to see what the sophomores can accomplish this season. I have high expectations all around, but I just want to see that everyone gets better and enjoys themselves. If we can do that, if we can focus on ourselves, I think we're going to have a great year."