Are You a Practice or a Meet Swimmer?

SwimSwam.com published an article yesterday by Eric McGinnis, Rollins College, titled "4 Reasons You Are a Practice Swimmer." (http://swimswam.com/4-reasons-youre-practice-swimmer/)

An interesting and provocative article. I lean toward agreeing with the 4 reasons. Note that this article was written by a college coach, who is a former elite level swimmer. However, the comments to it seem to pertain mostly to age group swimming (14 & U). My questions: Should age group swimmers build a base with more yardage and short rest sets through a certain age and stage of development, then spend more time working specific race pace sets as they progress into higher levels of swimming? Does it benefit young swimmers more to swim at race pace now; or, should they first develop excellent techniques in all 4 strokes, build endurance and aerobic capacity, and then move toward practicing what I call that "5th stroke," i.e., sprinting/speed? PSYCHODAD's and COACHPETE's comments are spot on for age groupers (and Masters swimmers, too). Technique is extremely important at all levels to develop that muscle memory. Once that is established, a swimmer can work specifically on speed and race pace workouts without sacrificing technique.