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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I've had a boy and girl and been in the swimming game a long time. It's actually not that hard to predict. Boys get faster with puberty almost always (of course, puberty varies). Girls who were big for their age when they were young/go through puberty early often peak at 12-13. After that, they gain weight, get bigger hips/boobs, and they stop dropping time. Many of those girls quit. The girls who were good when they were young but not particularly big for their age (especially the ones on the thinner/taller side) tend to continue to do well post-puberty and stay swimming longer.[/quote]

What does "big for their age" mean?  Seems like you don't mean tall for their age given your comments about thinner/taller side, so do you mean muscular for their age?[/quote]

By "big for their age" I generally mean tall and strong/thick...not super skinny. The tall/super skinny girls tend to do fine and keep swimming. Also, the 10-12 year olds who are tall because they have super tall parents often do just fine too because they end up giant (5'10" or whatever). It's the girls who get to their full height at 11 or 12 who, in my experience, often struggle later because they no longer have the size advantage (many girls who were smaller shoot past them) and then they get hips/boobs that generally make swimming harder.[/quote]

This matches my own experience exactly. Before age 14-15 I always came in third or fourth at the big meets (e.g. summer all stars or age group champs) to girls who were bigger/stronger than me. I wanted to be like them so badly because they were faster and winning the meets/breaking records. I used to eat junk food after school in an effort to "bulk up"! Then they all stopped getting taller and became more curvy because that was their body type. Meanwhile I kept growing a little even past puberty. We all ended up swimming D1 in college, but I was at a power 5 school while they ended up at mid-major schools. A couple of them went to schools geographically close to mine, so our teams swam against each other once or twice. It was surreal to beat them after coming in behind them for so many years. I never would have predicted it at age 12. Being tall is no guarantee to become a great swimmer, but a tall girl who is pretty fast but not the fastest often does end up passing the super fast girl who's going to max out at 5'5". [/quote]

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