Nerding Out: SCY National Age Group Record Progressions

With nearly 100 individual National Age Group records going down in the last seven months alone (for those not keeping track, Michael Andrew accounted for around 40 of them), we decided it was about time we put together a historical list of to see where the top age groupers have been, and where they might go in the future.  Below, we embedded a spreadsheet of the progression of short course yards National Age Group records from all of the existing data we have available.  In addition, we included the swimmer’s total number of Olympic medals in the righthand columns.

Although we went through these pretty thoroughly, our resources were limited (available meet results online, USA Swimming’s time databases, and existing USA Swimming top 100 documentation).  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.

The first clear trend from the lists: the older age groups have more record holders who have won Olympic medals, particularly on the men’s side (each swimmer counted only once per age group)…

That seems like a relatively obvious point; for years, we have seen legendary age group swimmers “peak early” with others in their age group catching and surpassing them as they get older.  The interesting thing, though, is that on both the boys and girls side, there is a pretty big jump from 11-12 year old record-setters who end up with Olympic medals to 13-14 year olds.  The only 11-12 year old record setter on the men’s side we could find with the available data is Ricky Berens.  Once we get to the 13-14 age group, however, that number jumps to nine.  Vinny Marciano and Destin Lasco rewrote the record book 11-12 record books this year.  Just from the looks of this, the real test will be if they can keep this up over the next two years.  If they do, according to the data, their shot at long-term staying power greatly increases.

Like all statistics, there are some factors here that skewed the data in a few of these age groups.  For example, while there are some “unbreakable” records in a lot of these age groups, the outlandish times posted by greats Tracy Caulkins, Sippy Woodhead, and Mary T. Meagher accounted for seven 15-16 NAG records that lasted at least 17 years.  While dozens of Olympians made their run in the age group, the Caulkins, Woodhead, and Meagher were so far ahead of their era that their times weren’t touched for nearly two decades.

We have also compiled progressions in long course meters, and put the finishing touches on lists that account for every instance a swimmer (or swimmers) broke a particular record.  All of these lists will be posted within the next few days, along with some additional analysis where we dig a little further into the results.