Elizabeth Beisel, of North Kingstown High School, says she enjoys doing things teenagers do, such as surfing with her friends off Narragansett Town Beach. She has posted the second-fastest time of any American female swimmer in the 200-meter backstroke and will swim in seven events at the U.S. Olympic Trials in June.

The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

The request caught Elizabeth Beisel off-guard.

“Will you sign this?” a girl asked Beisel as the girl stood on the deck of the University of Rhode Island swimming pool Saturday holding a copy of the program from the R.I. Interscholastic League’s girls state swimming championships.

You can excuse Beisel for being a little stunned by the question. After all, the girl asking for the autograph was a competitor in the meet just like Beisel.

How many young Rhode Island athletes have ever had someone who competed against them ask for an autograph?

But then, these days, Beisel is traveling in relatively uncharted territory for a Rhode Island teenager.

It can be debated that there has never been a Rhode Island high school athlete who has reached the level of national athletic prominence at such an early age as Beisel in the swimming world.

Rocco Baldelli was the sixth selection overall in the 2000 Major League Draft, but that came only a few days before he graduated from Hendricken High. Brian Lawton was the first American selected No. 1 in the NHL Draft, but that was two months after he had finished his senior season at Mount St. Charles in 1983.

Beisel is only a 15-year-old North Kingstown High School sophomore, who has become one of the top female swimmers in the country.

Last spring, just a few weeks after she had competed in the state high school championships, she was swimming in the World Championships in Melbourne, Australia, as the youngest member of the U.S. National Team.

Last summer at the U.S. Junior National Championships, swimming against the top 18-and-under female swimmers in the country, she won four individual national titles.

She has posted the second fastest time of any American female swimmer in the 200-meter backstroke and has qualified to swim in seven events at the trials for this year’s U.S. Olympic Swim team in June.

Last Saturday she gave Rhode Islanders an up-close look at her amazing talent.

At the state high school meet, she not only set state records in the two individual events she swam, she also broke longtime URI pool records.

Comparisons of athletes from different sports eras really don’t mean much, but it’s interesting to note Beisel’s 1:47.38 performance in the 200-yard freestyle on Saturday broke the URI pool record that had been set by four-time U.S. Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson in 1989.

Three years after she set that record, Thompson won a silver medal in the 100-meter freestyle at the Olympic Games in Barcelona and was a member of two gold-medal relay teams. She went on to swim in three more Olympic Games and won a total of 12 Olympic medals.

Thompson was a 16-year-old high school student when she set the URI record; Beisel broke it as a 15-year-old.

What makes Beisel’s story so intriguing is that she is a born-and-bred Rhode Islander. She first fell in love with the water and the beach down the road from her Saunderstown home. Her mother is a native Rhode Islander. In the stands on Saturday were her 87-year-old grandparents.

“My mother and father don’t drive too far anymore, but they wanted to be here to see her,” Joan Beisel, Elizabeth’s mother, said about her parents coming from their Providence home to see their granddaughter in action.

When Elizabeth’s not competing with her high school team or traveling to national or international competitions, the teenage sensation spends about 20 hours a week training with the Attleboro Bluefish swim club. But she’s determined to maintain a balance in her life. She loves music and, when school is out and she has more free time in the summer, she often can be found surfing with her friends off the Narragansett Town Beach.

“I love to surf. I’m a teenager, and there are other parts of my life that I want to do,” said Beisel.

That life balance is why her parents have resisted suggestions that their daughter give up the life of a normal five-day-a-week high school student for the home-schooling regimen that some young national swimming stars undertake so they will have more time for practice.

“It’s important that she’s with her friends and people who have other interests,” her father, Ted Beisel, said last year. “You have to be able to talk about more than just the 200-meter backstroke.”

What has made it fun to watch is that through it all she has been full of laughs and smiles.

Look at the picture in Sunday’s Journal of Beisel and a fellow competitor after finishing the 100-yard backstroke at the high school state meet. It’s an image of two happy and excited teenagers.

She knows, however, that superstar status comes with pressure, even when you’re only 15.

“I definitely feel pressure,” said Beisel. “Everybody I know is asking, ‘Are you going to be in the Olympics’? I’m going into the trials with the mindset [that] whatever happens, happens. I’m young. I figure I have at least two more Olympics after this year.”

And a lot more autograph signing.

Beisel’s record day

Individual records set by Elizabeth Beisel at Saturday’s state girls swimming championships:

In the 200-yard freestyle, the URI pool record of 1:51.73 had been set by Jenny Thompson in 1989. From 1992 through 2004, Thompson won eight Olympic gold medals.

jgillool@projo.com