After a bit of a hiatus, we’re back with an updated version and additional analysis of our short course yards National Age Group Record progressions. We’ve worked heavily on filling the gaps, particularly in the 1960’s, 1970’s, and 1980’s. We’re still missing some data from the 1960’s in the 15-16 and 17-18 age groups (back then, they were tracked as just 15-18, so we need to verify ages), but big steps have been made overall.
Once again, this list only includes a swimmer’s fastest time in a particular event in a specific age group. So even though Caeleb Dressel broke the 17-18 SCY 50 free record three times, he’s only listed once in this list. See any errors or omissions? Feel free to leave them in the comments section.
One particularly interesting trend in looking at the ebbs and flows of age group development is the number of records broken over time. We took each age group, and examined the number of records broken over time, separating things by decade beginning in the 1980’s. When looking at the 2000’s, we did take 2008 and 2009 into account; the supersuit era tended to skew data in a lot of ways, so while we included it in our 2008-2009 summation, we also gave those two years their own column:
| Since 2010 | 2000-2009 | 1990-1999 | 1980-1989 | 2008-2009* | Total # of records | |
| 17-18 boys | 15 | 23 | 11 | 32 | 6 |
81 |
|
17-18 girls |
15 | 23 | 14 | 18 | 5 | 70 |
| 15-16 boys | 19 | 17 | 6 | 29 | 3 |
71 |
|
15-16 girls |
19 | 14 | 7 | 24 | 5 | 64 |
| 13-14 boys | 29 | 25 | 10 | 25 | 9 |
89 |
|
13-14 girls |
14 | 14 | 17 | 11 | 5 | 56 |
| 11-12 boys | 20 | 41 | 11 | 25 | 7 |
97 |
|
11-12 girls |
12 | 29 | 25 | 23 | 12 | 89 |
| Total # of records | 143 | 186 | 101 | 187 |
52 |
The biggest takeaways:
- While the progression of records in the 15-16 and 17-18 groups were very similar between genders, the 11-12 and 13-14 age groups were vastly different by gender. In particular, the 13-14 boys and 11-12 boys records have been broken at a substantially greater rate. We have more interesting information about the progression of these age groups on a deeper scale that we will share next week.
- While we’re seeing more records going down in the 11-12 age groups, we have to remember that USA Swimming only began tracking the longer events (200’s of stroke, 400 IM, distance freestyles) in 2000.
- Our current decade is on pace to absolutely shatter the previous decades in terms of number of records broken. We’re already at 143, and we’re not even halfway through. Why? We have theories, and we’ll explore this more next week.
Following up on this, we have some interesting data to regarding the overall speed of top age groupers (not just NAG record setters) that we’ll publish soon, along with an updated LCM list. After we finalize the LCM records, we’ll put together a page where both lists will be readily available, and link it to the home page.
Notice anything else worth mentioning? Feel free to discuss below.
Dressel should now reappear and qualify for Jr Olympics.. forget about Jr Pan Pacs because Sedov and Santana will be on Jr Olympics.. and the whole swim community want to see these 3 battle..
Michael Andrew… he is everywhere on that list lol
Honestly cant wait for Dressel to make his debut. From interviews he seems like a very likable guy and he is hella fast.
Does anyone from the Fresno/Clovis area know whatever became of David Chan? He was something of a local legend even by the time I started as an age grouper in 1996. He was probably about 4 years my senior.
It was only brief, but 13-14 boys 200 yard Backstroke. Jay Glenn, of SPD in IL broke Burgess’ record of 152.63, however I don’t know the exact time (1:51.81 maybe?). It was at the Illinois Age Group State Championships that March of 1994 and before David Chan re-set the record shortly after.
Crazy that Kostoff still has those distance records…
7 months left in 2014, we could potentially match the previous decades total records with FIVE years to go. I would love to hear/read/discuss everyone’s interpretation of this. The super age groupers that used to be outliers now seem to be the norm. Are we over professionalising age group swimming as we try to keep up with the Missy’s, MA’s, most of NCAP’s of the world? Have we decided that long term development was over emphasied and we can in fact maximise potential at a younger age? Are we screwing over a generation of potential future champions by over working them at 10,11,12,13 years old just to keep up? Does it matter as long as the US continue to lead… Read more »
Karlee Bispo went 145.in 200 free in high school meet. It was a National High School record at the time.
Fyi
That is a lot of work putting together such informative table. Like very much the use of google docs in iframe, too. Nice job!