The Bobcats will lose just two swimmers, making the future a bright one for Ohio.
The 2014-15 swimming and diving season didn’t end as coach Rachel Komisarz-Baugh and her team had hoped.
But now that the season is over, Komisarz-Baugh must start looking to what the future holds for her program.
Three weeks ago, the Bobcats finished a disappointing sixth in the Mid-American Conference Championships, but she knows winning a conference title is within her program’s reach in the years to come.
“I’m realistic that it’s going to take some time,” she said. “But I think we’ve made some significant strides this year, which will lead to significant ones next year toward winning the MAC.”
Komisarz-Baugh can afford to think about championships because of a solid returning squad, as she is only losing two swimmers before next year. With that depth, and with the addition of six new swimmers for the 2015-16 season, she can focus on the long-term progress of her program, specifically with the divers.
Her diving team was shorthanded this year to say the least. The team had three divers — one was redshirted and one was inactive — which left freshman Karissa Conner to compete in the MAC as the only diver for the Bobcats.
But next season, current senior Haleigh Bartlett — who previously took a redshirt — will join Conner.
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“That will help tremendously,” Komisarz-Baugh said. “We know that we will definitely have two on the boards next year and we are still working on one or two to add to that group.”
The additions should produce a lot more points for her team, which had standout contributions in the relays last season.
The Bobcats will lose senior Tori Bagan, however, who swam the breaststroke leg in the 200 and 400 relays.
The 200 will return juniors Addison Ferguson and Haley Clark, along with sophomore Carrie Dukes. The 400 will return Ferguson, Clark and Laura Dawson, a sophomore.
While losing Bagan will create a hole to fill in the lineup, losing just one from a solid team of four will ease some of Komisarz-Baugh’s worries because of the depth of her swimmers.
“We’ve seen some great improvement from some of the breaststrokers that we have on the team right now,” she said.
Freshman Liz Murphy and sophomore Hannah Shinn are two young guns that Komisarz-Baugh wants to place in significant roles as the team hopes to continue its dominance in both relays.
“We’re just going to encourage them and empower them to fill those shoes,” she said. “I think they both have the potential talent to be able to do that. We’re also still recruiting a breaststroker. That is a big position we need to fill.”
And with so few seniors leaving the program, Komisarz-Baugh has less to worry about when it comes to recruiting, so she can focus more on creating the future leaders for the team.
She returns strong leaders who were upperclassmen this past season and who should play a significant role next season.
“I believe that, after your freshman year, you can take on that leadership role,” she said. “It’s really about doing the right thing, seeing the vision of the program and helping your teammates and doing whatever it takes to help this program move forward.”
For Komisarz-Baugh’s swimming program, it’s back to training and preparing for next season. She said she has no intentions of changing her training routine and was satisfied with how it worked.
What she does want is for the swimmers to adapt to how the MAC competition will shape up in the coming months.
She said the MAC is changing to be faster than it has been in the past, and she wants to motivate her swimmers to work hard and hang with the other competitors.
Komisarz-Baugh knows her team is capable of doing that.
And doing so will put her team closer to what every swimmer on the team aspires to have: a MAC title.
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