Elisa Knoche is the head coach of both the men’s and women’s swimming teams at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. She previews the upcoming season in this interview. 

Q: Who is someone to keep an eye on to during the season?

A: On the Women’s side, we actually have more freshmen than returners. The freshmen are new to our program this season, so it’s going to be exciting to watch that class as a whole as they transition to our team and college and watch them as they grow and improve at the end of the season. 

Q: What are the team goals for this season? 

A: We’re going to talk about that tomorrow (Sept. 23rd) with our team. We started practice last week Thursday (Sept. 15th). We’ve just been focusing right now on getting to know each other and getting in the pool and getting back into shape. Tomorrow, the team is actually going to sit down and together they are going to come up with team goals because if I just say, “Here are your goals”, there needs to be ownership for them. They need to believe in them as well, so I’m not going to dictate their goals, but we can come up with them together and then I can help us move in those directions. 

Q: How do you think the team will look compared to last year’s team?

A: A lot different with all of our new freshmen, I don’t know where we will finish in the conference this year. We just started. Some of our conference schools may even start later than us, so no one has had any competitions, so I really don’t know how we’ll do at the conference meet at the end of the season. I have nothing to compare us to yet. We’re going to work hard every day to help us prepare to be the best Warhawk team that we can be at the end of the season. 

Q: Do you feel like Whitewater does a good job of supporting women’s athletics 

A: Yes, I do. I feel like Whitewater does a great job when it comes to supporting its women’s athletes around the school. 

Coach Elise Knoche and the Whitewater swimming teams begin their season on Saturday, Oct. 8 at the Alumni and Intersquad meet at 12 pm at the Williams Center Pool. Whitewater’s first meet of the season will be on Saturday, Oct. 15 against Illinois Institute of Technology at Chicago, IL at 1 pm.