JT Goett and BYU: Reading a Backstroke Commitment Through the Number 23.38

"Behind the locker-room door, there are stories that have never been told."

23.38 seconds.

That is the only number in this recruiting announcement that made me stop, read three times, and then reopen the meet records to verify. In a two-page commitment notice filled with coach names, school names, meet names, and a ceremonial quote, that figure sits quietly, unbolded in the headline, unmentioned in the closing line. But it is the only thing that truly tells me about JT Goett.

It is the lead-off time in a 50-metre backstroke relay leg. No momentum from a swimmer ahead, no diving advantage. A flat, clean, and entirely honest start. In swimming, this is the kind of data that rarely gets advertised — yet it is exactly what a college coach wants to see.

And it comes from a piece whose bulk consists of numbers retold in a favourable way.

Context: A recruiting spot inside the NCAA machine

To understand why 23.38 matters more than the commitment itself, it needs to be placed in the system it belongs to.

JT Goett, a male backstroker from Moraga, California — a Campolindo High School student who also trains at Moraga Country Club — announced on a recruiting-season day that he had committed — verbally, and therefore without legal binding force — to join the BYU men's swim team from the fall of 2027, in the class of 2031.

Within the American college swimming industry, this is a regional-tier recruit, published on SwimSwam's recruiting channel — a channel funded by Fitter and Faster Swim Camps, a camp business. This is the detail I want you to remember, because it explains the tone of the entire piece.

On performance, the picture is fairly clear. At the CIF championships, Goett swam the 100-yard backstroke in 50.39 in the final — finishing 15th. In the prelims of the same meet, he swam 50.01. At the NCS (North Coast Section) meet, he touched in 49.96 — the first sub-50 of his career. And in a relay, he led off the 50 backstroke in 23.38, a personal best.

The destination-team context: BYU finished 5th out of 7 teams at the 2026 Big 12 Championships with 843 points. The team's top two backstrokers — Max Kleinman (47.02, 12th) and Tanner Edwards (48.25, 23rd) — both made finals. The Big 12 final cut in the 100 backstroke was 48.28. Other relevant cuts: 100 freestyle 44.57, 200 individual medley 1:48.96.

In other words, Goett arrives at BYU roughly 1.68 seconds away from the conference final cut.

That is a normal margin for a developing recruit. But there are other details more worth noting — and they are not where the article wants you to look.

The core: Three numbers and one void

Number one — 23.38 seconds. This is Goett's most transferable asset. In the 50 backstroke, raw speed decides everything. A lead-off leg has no momentum from the swimmer before, so it reflects exactly the capacity to accelerate from a standing start — including reaction time, dive technique, and pacing over the first 50. For a 16-to-17-year-old, that figure sits in the competitive group of his cohort.

Based on my experience covering swimming meets, this is the kind of number head coaches look at first when evaluating a relay prospect. You can teach a swimmer to improve dive and turn technique, but you cannot teach basic speed. 23.38 says Goett's basic speed is real.

Number two — 49.96 seconds. This was Goett's first sub-50, and it is notable that it came at the NCS — a regional meet — not at CIF, the bigger one. In the same season, he swam 50.39 in the CIF final but 50.01 in the prelims. That means his second-best swim of the season came when there was no final-round pressure.

This is a behavioural pattern college coaches call many things: a "prelims swimmer," a "final-round fader," or simply "a big-meet problem." I do not want to overstate it — the sample is one season, and one fade is not a pattern. But in swimming, where the gap between prelims and final can be half a second, it is a soft flag worth tracking.

Number three — 48.28 seconds. This is the Big 12 final cut, the milestone Goett must chase. A 1.68-second gap is not small in swimming, but it sits within the normal development range for a male swimmer aged 16 to 20. Crucially, BYU has a two-year runway — from commitment to matriculation — in which a one-to-two-second improvement is entirely plausible.

And the biggest void. The article does not mention one important thing: all of Goett's times were swum in short course yards (SCY) — the standard format for American high school and college swimming. Short-course times are typically faster than long course and cannot be compared directly with world records.

There is no figure at all for Goett's long-course (LCM) capacity.

This means any projection of his technical ceiling carries very low confidence. It also means this recruiting piece, technically speaking, tells half the story. The other half — long-course ability, which decides every international meet — will have to wait.

In the profile of a male swimmer, ages 16-17 sit at the front of the development curve. Male swimmers typically peak between 20 and 26, and puberty typically assists rather than impedes their speed — entirely the opposite of the female swimmers whose careers I have spent most of my own covering. This is the biological advantage Goett holds, and it is the reason BYU is willing to invest in a recruit with a 1.68-second gap.

The contrarian angle: An industry selling hope

This is where I want to say what few swimming-recruiting writers will admit.

The JT Goett piece is a product. Not in a bad sense, but in the most practical one: it was produced by a channel funded by a camp brand, a channel with an incentive to publish many recruiting items, and each recruiting item tends to be written to a template favourable to the athlete and the program.

The structure of the piece says so: an opening paragraph about a lifelong dream, a quote from the athlete, a list of times, a few lines on the program, and the sponsorship disclosure. It is the template of a content industry whose product is hope — and within it, readers are rarely reminded that a verbal commitment carries no binding force.

And I say this as someone who has worked on both sides of the industry.

"I went to Russia looking for answers, and found only more questions."

I arrived in Nha Trang in 2026 and started a women's football commentary channel. The opening match drew 2,347 views. I stayed up until 2 a.m. replying to 59 comments. What I learned from that is: when you cover a sport people are not used to following, you have to tell a story large enough to compensate for the shortage of numbers. But you also have to be honest about that shortage. You cannot sell belief without saying you are selling belief.

The Goett piece does the opposite. It presents a developmental recruit in the tone of a successful one. It delivers the 1.68-second gap indirectly, by mentioning the 48.28 cut inside a paragraph about two other swimmers. That is not a lie. But it is a truth placed in the hardest-to-see spot.

"Voices from the locker room" — the real story of an athlete training, facing pressure, and transforming — is not in the piece. It sits between the lines, in the gap between prelims and final.

Three signals worth watching

There are three signals I will track over the next two years, before Goett matriculates.

First, long-course data. If he swims a 50-metre meet this summer or next with a 100 backstroke around 55-57 seconds, his international ceiling will begin to sharpen. Without it, any projection is speculation. I predicted in 2026 that it would take four more years for a female referee to officiate at a World Cup, and when Stéphanie Frappart did so at Qatar 2026, I was reminded that predictions only hold value when built on dense enough data.

Second, the mission factor. BYU has a peculiarity that no other American university shares: a large proportion of its athletes serve two-year missions for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. This means that even after Goett signs a formal commitment, his competitive timeline — and his athletic age at the start of his first college season — can shift significantly. This is the largest variable in his profile, and it is entirely absent from the article.

Third, the non-binding nature of the verbal commitment. With two years before matriculation, the risk of a change of decision is real. The American college recruiting industry has its own term for it — a "flip" — and it happens more often than people think. A verbal commitment is not a contract. It is a statement of intent, and intent can change, especially for a young athlete and a program seeking roster depth like BYU.

BYU itself is also showing a clear strategy: in the same recruiting class, the men's team added Mason Shirley, a distance freestyler from Texas. Recruiting two athletes in two different event groups — backstroke and distance free — suggests the program is building depth across groups, rather than chasing a single star.

A closing thought

In a major women's season, I still return to pieces like this for one reason. They show me how the industry treats the young — how it builds a story, chooses which number to bold, and decides what goes at the top and what drifts to the bottom.

JT Goett may become a good relay contributor for BYU over the next two or three years. He may not. But one thing is certain: in the piece about him, the most important number — 23.38 seconds — is not where an ordinary reader would look. It sits quietly in the list of times, waiting for someone to read closely for the third time.

And that makes me wonder: if a regional-tier men's recruit can be packaged this carefully, how are the stories of female athletes — athletes I know exist, are competing, are waiting — being packaged? Or worse: are they being packaged at all?

"When the crowd is gone, we finally listen to the athlete."

Perhaps that is true of athletes who never had a crowd.