The USA Swimming motivational times
The times on the NAG list can get faster or they can remain the same, but they are not allowed to get slower
I try to avoid writing about specific sports unless events in one can be generalized to an overall development concept. This week I am writing specifically about swimming and explaining my thoughts about changes to USA Swimming's list of National Age Group Motivational Times (NAG).
tl;dr
The times should either get faster or remain the same. They should not be allowed to get slower. Leave a comment if you think you can convince me I'm wrong. To find out why I think this way, continue reading.
What happened?
USA Swimming publishes a stratified list of 'motivational' times (B, A, AA, AAA, and AAAA) for all events and age groups following each Olympic cycle. On the 2025-28 list 49% of the times got slower than those on the previous list (2021-24), 51% got faster, and 3% stayed the same. Most disturbing, 100% of the times in the 10 & under age group slowed down.
Ever since these times first appeared in 1994 there have been occasions when a small number of them got slower. However, the unprecedented number of changes in the just-released list has caused quite a ruckus within the coaching community.
Almost as soon as the list was released commenters on SwimSwam and Facebook, and probably on pool decks around the country started weighing in. Some took an absolutist stance, declaring that the times should never get slower. Others rationalized the changes based on the formula used to produce them. And technical gurus viewed the list as a statistical tool to represent performance within the athlete pool.
How is the NAG list produced?
You can review the current times at MySwimIO (click the Current times only slider near the top of the table and you will be able to see how much each of the times have changed).
To produce the list, the fastest 16th place time in each event during the preceding 4-year period—a quad in the lingo—is used as a base time to calculate the standards using this formula:
AAAA = base + 5%
AAA = base + 10%
AA = base + 15%
A = base + 20%
BB = base + 30% (35% for 10 & under)
B = base + 40% (50% for 10 & under)
Swimming times are usually accurate to the one-hundredth of a second (two digits after the decimal), but in the motivational times list the one-hundredth position is irrelevant, so after the calculations are completed the last digit of every time is changed to '9' if it isn't that already (an argument could be made for dropping the last digit completely but one thing at a time). The result of these calculations becomes the NAG times list for the next quad.
Since many of the 16th place (base) times from the previous quad were slower than the preceding time, 49% of the new 'motivational' times got slower.
This raises two questions.
Why did performances slow over the previous quad?
There could be various answers for this. Some have suggested that instituting the tech suit ban for 12 & unders in 2020 slowed things down. Seriously? A 10-year-old in a tech suit is a silly waste of money, not a performance enhancer. The tech suit ban did not cause this.
A lack of training and competition opportunities over an almost 2-year period during the pandemic could be the culprit, especially because of the non-sport social consequences left in its wake. But the performance decline is not a Covid phenomenon. Although it may have been exacerbated by the pandemic, the decline has been underway since 2016.
In a September Zoom call to discuss the motivational times list, Patrick Murphy, the senior director of Member Data and Product at USA Swimming, shared evidence of a sharp decline in the number of 10 & under girls who achieved AAAA times in selected events (Figure 1). The chart shows a precipitous drop in several events beginning in 2016 that continues today.
Figure 1
Figure 1 may be an extreme example but it's only part of the story; the decrease in performance is occurring for boys and girls, and in all age groups.
Most top times in each age group continue to impress. However, when the 16th place base time causes a dramatic rewrite of the entire NAG list it indicates a rapid falloff in performance.
The depth we're used to seeing in U.S. age group swimming is getting shallower.
Should 'motivational' times ever get slower?
Official reaction to the new NAG list has focused mostly on the mechanics of producing it rather than considering its underlying purpose.
If these times get slower then their motivational usefulness disappears. Imagine the 11-year-old who went to bed with a 'B' time and woke up with an 'A'. The list loses its meaning if things like that can happen.
Should the formula be engineered so that a certain percentage of athletes are able to achieve at each level? Those who think so are describing percentiles: Above 96% = AAAA, 90-95% = AAA, and so on. A list produced in this manner would be relative to its underlying data just like the current list but much more volatile. More importantly, why would it be necessary to assure x-number of athletes achieve certain levels? How does this help anything? It's certainly not motivational. And we would still have to answer the same question, Should the times be allowed to get slower?
Performance percentiles would be an interesting (and welcome) addition to USA Swimming's data products but these would be helpful with demographic analysis, not motivation.
Is a reset or rethink needed for the way the NAG list is produced? Maybe, but until then USA Swimming should undo the damage by unpublishing and fixing the 2025-28 list. Recalculate with one final step: The times can get faster or they can remain the same, but they are not allowed to get slower. In other words, if the formula produces a time slower than the old one—those on the 2021-24 list—then the old time remains and the newly calculated slower one is discarded.
The NAG list has been and can continue to be a wonderful motivational tool. But allowing times to become slower displays a fundamental misunderstanding of how the list works and what it's for.
Please let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Excellent explanation and points! Times should get faster or remain the same if the calculations ask for a time drop. This will keep the bar to remain stable! What I don't understand is why use the 16th place for base and not 18th or 20th place?
I agree with you to a certain extent. However, there may be reasons for the time standards to get slower, depending on how they are used. For instance, if they are used as a cutoff for meets or camps or anything else of that nature, then they need to reflect a certain number of athletes. If you have an AA meet and only 2 kids can get in, that could be a problem (obviously a ridiculous extreme, but you get my point). So, if the time standards are used ONLY as motivational goals, then I agree with you. But the reality is that these time standards are used in many different ways across the country, so adjustments may have to be made downward as well as upward to reflect the longer term trends that yo describe in your opinion piece here.