I should probably clarify that this was only in the boys division and only for high-school age kids. It was also over 20 years ago but it is still something I am very proud of to this day.
The system that I used in order to be ranked 11th in the entire state with a population of nearly 9 million, isn't as complicated as you might think. In fact, most of it happened completely by accident. I was discovered by a coach, I never even though of trying out for the team because I was more interested in team sports like soccer, basketball, and American football than I was at individual events.
But this is how it went.
src I'm obviously not Michael Phelps
When you first start to learn how to swim you don't know how to do anything. I don't even remember very much from my beginning stages of learning to swim but I have been told by my parents that I took to it like a fish to water. When you are in the water at the beginning stages, how it is that you learn to propel yourself using your legs is largely an accident. Sure the instructor will give you your paddleboard and teach you the "Frog kick" and the "flutter kick" but they can't make a kid do these correctly. Either you are going to do it right or you aren't.
Without even trying, I ended up having a rather powerful frog kick and this is absolutely essential in breaststroke, which is the event that I excelled in. In other events such as freestyle and backstroke I was rather average as I never really liked the flutter kick and I still feel that way to this day.
I didn't practice the frog kick, I just preferred it. Also, my family encouraged their 4 kids to be involved in as many activities outdoors as possible and we think this was because we would absolutely drive my mother crazy if we were in the house too long, especially in the summertime. Thankfully for her, her kids liked nothing more than be given a packed lunch and sent off to the community pool with a couple of dollars between us for Cokes and a candy bar each.
We would be there for hours almost every day doing silly things that kids do and come back home suntanned and tired - the second thing being something that almost certainly made our parents happy.
One of the things that kids will do is play games where you simply race to the other side of the pool and another one was a game called "Sharks and Minnows" where one person is the shark in the middle of the pool and everyone else is a minnow and the objective is to make it to the other side of the pool without being caught by the shark. You are caught by them dragging you to the surface and tapping you on the head before you reach the other wall. This sport didn't just require speed but also the ability to hold your breath for a long time. It's probably illegal to play this game now because I am sure that a lot of us nearly drowned.
It was during one of these games that a coach from the high school spotted me and how I quickly made it from one end of the pool (it wasn't Olympic size) to the other with great speed and never came up for breath. Even after most of the minnows had been converted to sharks I could sometimes still make it all the way to the other side without being caught and on a number of occasions the game ended because the sharks were tired of trying to catch me.
Anyway, the coach saw this happening and approached me after the games. I was only in 8th grade at the time and somehow he convinced me and my parents and whatever athletic commission to allow me to compete at a high-school level even though I was not yet actually in high-school.
I'd like to say that I Koby Bryant'ed the competition in that first year but this was not the case. What did end up happening was that I would routinely place in the top 5 even though some of the other participants were 5 years older than me.
By the time my sophomore year was in full swing, I was always placing 1st. In fact, there was only one meet that we had that year where I did not finish in first place. I still remember that one match of 100m breaststroke with a certain level of disappointment because it was my own arrogance and not "sticking to the plan" that resulted in my loss. Well, I suppose 2nd place isn't really a loss but I was so accustomed to winning all the races I was in by many meters that I was kind of disappointed about that one loss more than I should have been.
In my junior year I never placed anything other than 1st and ended up going to regionals, where I also placed 1st. This brought me to the state championships and well, let's just say that I got humbled by the competition on a state-wide level. I was up against people who were far more serious about this event than I ever was - I routinely skipped practice and never did weights even though my coach encouraged me to the contrary on both of these things.
When I placed 11th in the breaststroke finals, I was unhappy about that, but the coaches had an 11th place medal custom made for me and somewhere in my parents' attic that medal is in a box covered in dust. As arrogant as it sounds I was kind of demoralized by not placing 1st in the state and didn't even feel like going out for the swim team the following year.
Due to encouragement from the coaches in other sports I was advised to focus on soccer exclusively my senior year and I didn't compete in swimming at all, which might be a good thing because I did end up getting a full ride athletic scholarship for that sport. However, I am still quite a strong swimmer to this day especially with the "frog kick."
While I am sure that my movement probably could have been refined by the coach at the time and even more so with the technology that exists today, the coach that I had in the 90's didn't really have to do very much to make me fast at breaststroke, I was just naturally good at it.
I think that in a lot of sports there is a certain amount of natural ability that just comes to some people and others who are less fortunate by genetics can practice all day every day and never get to an excellent level. That's just the way the world works I'm afraid.
I didn't really try to be the best at breaststroke, it just kind of happened. I took a lot of pride in this at the time but I also didn't allow anyone to push me to grandiose notions of making the Olympics or anything crazy like that. Who knows? Maybe if I had been a LOT more dedicated than I was and not a hard-headed teenager who wanted to play all the sports I could have excelled at it a lot more than I did. I'm still quite happy that I can claim that as a 16 year old I was the 11th best high-school swimmer in the entire state though.