Elizabeth Beisel accepts one of her many medals during the RIIL girls swimming championships.

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The Providence Journal / Andrew Dickerman

The times probably don’t mean much to anyone who doesn’t follow swimming — although even someone who couldn’t name two of the four strokes in the individual medley would look at them and say: “Wow, that seems wicked fast” — but it’s easy enough to put them in perspective.

Elizabeth Beisel finished second at the U.S. Olympic Trials in both the 400-meter individual medley — which, by the way, is 100 meters each of backstroke, butterfly, breaststroke and freestyle — and the 200-meter freestyle. In each case, the swimmer who beat her had to set a world record to do it.

That’s right — a world record.

Of course, when you’re swimming against the best in the world, that’s kind of what you have to do.

And Beisel is, without a doubt, one of the best swimmers in the world.

At the age of 15.

That’s the number that’s hard to get your head around.

Not the 4:32.87 clocking she recorded in the 400 IM in Omaha, second-best behind ’04 Olympian Katie Hoff’s world-record time of 4:31.12. Nor the 2:06.92, just a few ticks off Margaret Hoelzer’s world-record time of 2:06.09, in the 200 back.

Fifteen.

Beisel is 15, and she’s already an Olympian. In two events.

Mind-boggling.

Instead of spending her summer surfing with her North Kingstown High School friends in Narragansett, she’s in California, training with the U.S. Swim Team for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad.

She’ll celebrate her 16th birthday next month in Beijing and, if she ever wins a medal, it would touch off a statewide — even nationwide — celebration. That would be a truly sweeeeet 16.

The whole business is a bit hard to believe — even for Beisel.

“I still can’t believe that, for the rest of my life, I’m going to have ‘Olympian’ behind my name,” she said a few days ago. “Only a fraction of people get to do that.”

Elizabeth Beisel, Olympian.

At the age of 15.

How cool is that.

“When I looked up after finishing the IM,” she said, “and saw I’d finished second, I thought: ‘Oh my gosh, did that just happen?’ It was one of the coolest moments of my life. I still get chills thinking about it.”

It wasn’t a huge upset. But it wasn’t exactly expected, either.

“I knew I had a chance,” she said. “I went in thinking: ‘If I swim my best times, I’ll be happy. If I make the team, that’s great. If not, I’ll try again in four years.’ ”

Now, next month, the kid from Saunderstown, the high school sophomore who swims for NK and the Bluefish Swim Club of Attleboro, will be trying to medal for Team USA.

“It hasn’t really hit me,” she said. “It’s a dream come true.”

Like those Nashville cats the Lovin’ Spoonful sang about, who were playin’ (music) since they were babies, Beisel has been swimming since she was little more than a toddler.

“I started swimming competitively when I was five,” she said. “Actually, I started out as a diver, but I was horrible. It looked like the swimmers were having fun, so I tried out for the team, and they let me on. I haven’t been out of the water since.”

She’s certainly spending a lot of time in the water these days, working out twice a day while logging a total of between 13,000 and 15,000 grueling yards.

“I don’t usually do that when I’m home,” she said. “There are times when I feel as if my legs are going to fall off. But I’m benefiting now from just focusing on swimming.”

It is to the credit of Beisel — and her parents, Tom and Joan — that she focuses on things other than swimming.

While many top swimmers are home-schooled so they can spend more time in the pool, and also often live where they can train with other world-class athletes, Beisel continues to live at home and compete for her high school team.

“I get so much support at school,” she said. “I travel a lot for meets, and the teachers are so good about helping me to make up the work I miss. Swimming for the (high school) team is a way for me to give something back.”

It’s also a way for her to keep things real — to experience life as a normal teenager, rather than as a one-dimensional swimming prodigy.

As her father said last winter to The Journal’s John Gillooly: “It’s important that she’s with her friends, and people who have other interests. You have to be able to talk about more than just the 200-meter backstroke.”

Beisel is pleasant in conversation. She’s obviously bright and, not surprisingly, mature beyond her years.

Her trip to China won’t be her first overseas. She went to Melbourne, Australia, last summer for the World Championships — where, as the youngest member of the U.S. team, she finished 12th in the 200-meter backstroke. She has swum in the United Kingdom, and two years ago competed in the Pan-Pacific Games in Vancouver, B.C.

So she’ll be more steely-eyed than wide-eyed when she hits the water in Beijing.

As she was last year at the World’s, Beisel is the “baby” of the U.S. team. Freestyler Dana Torres, who’ll be swimming in her fifth Olympics at the age of 41, is old enough to be her mother.

“I am the youngest,” said Beisel, “but everyone gets along well, and I’m having a blast. It’s awesome to be representing the smallest state in the union in the Olympic Games.

“I barely remember watching the Olympics in ’04. I didn’t pay much attention. If you’d asked me then what I thought I’d be doing in the summer of 2008, I’d have said: ‘Surfing with my friends.’ ”

Now she’s caught a different wave, and she’s sitting on top of the world.

jdonalds@projo.com