I'm sure someone will dig up the stats.

I can say from my experience (though I'm in Canada), that a 49s 100y free would put you in the finals (top 8) for the provincial champs at the HS senior level. Of course, there would have been people who could have hit this sort of time, but swam other events instead (we had a 2 event + 1 relay limit when I raced), but I would not classify this as a 'common' time at all.

Yards or Meters ? Big difference....

Louis :-)

That's correct. Check out this tiny meet for example
A 15 yo boy swam a 49.45. The kid who came in 2nd had a seed time of 46.13 for the 100 free scy.

If you go to a larger meet in SoCal, a sub 49 second 100 free may not always get you into the top 5.

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Here's one more

The winner of the 15-16 yo boys goes sub 49, with a sub 48 seed time.

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Show me 'thousands' please. I'm sure there is some US list somewhere aggregating the top 15yo boys times across the USA.

Winter juniors cuts it’s a 45.39. That is what you would call “fast” on a national scale. 15 year old males arent quite fully developed. But if a 15 year old kid has been swimming year round since he was 8 and he only does a 49 he is not fast. But also know that a kid who swims a 49 at a high school duel meet is pretty darn fast compared to the average so it’s definitely respectable but you need some context .

You can definitely generate these kind of lists on the USA swimming website if you are board (edit or bored)

I was looking thru the top times for my daughters region (Pacific Northwest) from last year - the top 25 times for 15 yo were all sub 50 with the fastest 45.5x and there were 10 boys 14yo who went sub 50.

When I'm fit I'm around 32 as well. My daughter is 24.65 50 scy - and not a sprinter haha.

It's a speedwalking pedestrian at 49 but not fast fast.

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Ok, so 25 15 year-olds in the pacific northwest. Does that translate to thousands of them nation-wide?

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Found it playing around here: https://www.usaswimming.org/times/event-rank-search

While not the easiest to use, I figured out that in the 2018 competition year, the 250th ranked male 15 and under was 47.9.

So, while there certainly aren't 'thousands', there are probably 4-500 a year.

Well, that was the top 25 all under that mark. Maybe more than that...that was 49.65 I believe - how many more like that? Plus you have to count 16yo too in the sophomore count. And this is just USA swimming, there are other swim avenues even though the numbers are probably smaller.

I would say that there are definitely a couple thousand...I would rest easy with that number.

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

More like 958 :)

query parameters in the image attached. If you include girls 15-18, you'd get another 42 sub 49 second swims

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It was actually 1042 15yo 49.99 or faster. The volume of athletes that can swim there is pretty high.

1884 16yo 49.99 or faster.

This is just USA swimming so I guess it is 1000s

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DFRU - Detta Family Racing Unit...the kids like it and we all get out and after it...gotta keep the fam involved!

The USA Swimming age group time standards are, IMO, the best way to compare swimming times across diff ages and diff events. These standards categorize swimming times by age and event and "grade" any given time from "lower than B", B, BB, A, AA, AAA, and AAAA. According to these standards, 49.XX puts a 15 yr old male solidly in the AAA category as the AAA 100 yd free standard is 50.49. To make AAAA, he would need to go 48.19 before turning 16. I suppose the definition of "pedestrian" varies according to the person's frame of reference but given that the age 15 male B standard is 1:04, I personally would not say 49 is pedestrian. If he has been swimming hard for several years, he may not become an Oly Trials finalist but, in the grand scheme of swimming, he is certainly a very quick swimmer. Your Uncle A sounds a bit "elitist" in this judgment. You should ask him what his best 100 free time is. :)

Also, just FYI, the 18 yr old B standards for the 500, 1000, and 1650 free are 6:07, 12:51, and 21:21. These might be good goals for aspiring tri swimmers under age 40. For anyone interested, here's the link to the pdf file:

file:///C:/Users/Eric%20Mulkey/AppData/Local/Packages/Microsoft.MicrosoftEdge_8wekyb3d8bbwe/TempState/Downloads/2020-motivational-times-top-16-single-age.pdf

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Maybe, but HS swimming in Canada isn’t anything close to what it is in the US. So far in 2018, there have been 130 15-16 y/o boys who’ve gone 55.0 or faster for the 100 scm, which is roughly equivalent to the 49 for 100scy. That’s not counting the kids who are younger than that who’ve gone 55 or better. (Edit, there are 17 13-14 y/o’s who’ve done that) Most of those kids swim in the club system, not HS.

Given that the US has 10x the population and swimming is generally at a higher level than Canada anyway, there are likely thousands of kids who have gone faster than 49 for the 100, and that’s not even counting the ones who can but don’t swim that event.

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In Washington state last year, a 49 didn't even qualify my brother (a junior) for the state meet. Not pedestrian, but definitely getting a lot more common.

Given how many kids are that fast or faster, (some waaaay faster) I’d say uncle A is right, if I interpret his statement through his viewpoint as a guy who sees a ton of these performances all the time. It’s not that a 49 is slow, but by the same token it’s not outstanding. If that’s your best event, that probably won’t land you a college scholarship at a D1 school, and probably not even a D2.

In this context, pedestrian = commonplace.

For a bit of context, I was about a 56 or 57 100scm at age 16, I started late (14). That’s a 50-51s 100scy, back in the 80’s when times were about 1-2s slower than now at the top level. I wasn’t even close to sniffing any kind of D1 or D2 team in the US as a walk-on, let alone a scholarship.

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You could have walked on at my D1 school in the '80's. I did, slower than that. And could have at a few more schools for sure.
Swimming scholarships are actually pretty rate. Current limit looks like 9.9 per school. Spread over 4-5 years is 2 to 2.5 per year.
IF, and that's a big IF the school fully funds. Often scholarships are split to give more people a little $.
My school gave the equivalent of 3 full scholarships. Split so that 3 guys a year got fees (~tuition) covered. Not really much of an expenditure by the school.

I wouldn't call a HS Soph 49 pedestrian, but obviously a few thousand in the US can do that

Looking through this year's (Feb. 2018) state champs meet here in Texas the slowest qualifier for the boys 100 free qualified for the meet with a 47.79 (probably had the race of his life at regional 2 weeks earlier). He didn't get too far as he went a 49.92 in prelims.

my two cents...
short answer - no 49.99 for a high school male is not anything to write home about. and i would image that there are way more that 1000 high school males who are under 49.99 by the end of their season.

a bit longer answer -
as coach/volunteer with a decently ranking D3 swimming program, our program would not bother recruiting a high school junior/senior that is going 49.99 in the 100 free. a hs male fresh/soph...maybe??? but that is too early for us to start talking to them. (side not, we are currently recruiting women in the 50-51 range).

i did a quick USA swim database search (https://www.usaswimming.org/times/event-rank-search) of 13-15 year olds "this season". 49.99 puts you at a 4 way tie for 499th in the US of A. now there are a few important considerations here..."this season" is actually very important because that only includes September 2018-today. Most US swim clubs have not tapered for the championship meets at this point in the season, so all of these times are times under training. throw a taper in there and you'll get way more people.

This thread highlights how really shitty triathletes are at swimming...…:-)

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Those aren't really "standards" per se, although some meets may piggyback off them and clubs may use them for selecting who can go to certain meets. They are motivational times for tracking development.

Here's a link to how those times are arrived at, https://cdn.swimswam.com/...e-Standards-2012.pdf

For the 15-16 boys 100scy free, the adjustment factor is a 5. Applying the formula in the link, that means that to meet a AAA standard you are 10% slower than the average 16th place rank over the previous 4 years for that age group. That doesn't mean you are slow, but it isn't anything outstanding either. A "B" standard is a whopping 40% slower than the top 16 average.

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USA Swimming site ftw..

I searched males 10-16 yo, 100 FR scy 2019 competition year, and there are 1000 boys 49.79 and faster.

Yeah, and no-one has had a championship meet yet.

Just went to the USA swimming site, and the search isn't working for me (firewall issue, maybe?) but I see that Winter Nationals are on. So there's a nice time-suck for me while I work (rewriting standard financial statement reports this week, we just completed a massive project to convert our chart of accounts. Yay for mind numbing tasks!!)

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2020 National Masters Champion - M50-54 - 50m Butterfly