return to competitive swim after break

Question
My 17 yr old daughter returned to the swim team after a few years of doing other competitive sports.  She is very frustrated because she is having a lot of trouble dropping time and is even adding time, compared to when she swam at 14.  She even trained less at that time and had better results and can't understand why it is so much harder now.  Can you offer any advice?

Answer
Jean--
Relax, it takes time to get back into competitive swimming mode.  A lot can change in three years away from a sport.  Her body has probably grown, which means her muscles have changed(length, flexibility, etc.) and need to relearn the skills she had before.  Give it some time to get it back together.  Keep working and all should start to come together soon.  Really concentrate on any drills that work on individual parts of the strokes in order to teach those muscles the tricks of the trade again.  Since she was involved in other sports, she knows that skills are learned and when you go away from a sport for a period of time you lose some of the sharpness in those skills.  
Keep on plugging along and she'll get it back.
Good Luck,
George