Lizzy Johnson: From 23.17 to 51.13 and the Equation Florida State Must Solve Alone

Lizzy Johnson drove off the block in lane four. The water split around her shoulders, and amid the thick noise of a nearly empty pool, no one noticed anything unusual — until the electronic clock stopped at 23.17 seconds. It was the final of the women's 50 freestyle at the RAFC Winter Classic, a meet with no television, no telephoto lenses, just a few rows of plastic seats and a handful of parents filming on their phones. In that water, a young swimmer from Windermere, Florida, had just placed herself on a new trajectory.

A few days later, she announced the biggest decision of her young life: a verbal commitment to continue her academic and athletic career at Florida State University, beginning in 2028. On social media, she wrote: "I am overjoyed to announce my verbal commitment to continue my academic and athletic career at Florida State University! I am incredibly grateful for Goller, coach Ali, all my amazing friends, Cynthia, and my family for supporting me through this journey! I would also like to thank coach Kyle, Coach Ben, and coach Neal for giving me the opportunity to make a life long dream become a reality. I am so beyond excited for what the future holds and cannot wait to get started in Tally. GO NOLES!"

Johnson attends Windermere High School, where she is a junior, and swims year-round with Lakers Swimming. To understand why a scholarship spot at Florida State is a turning point, one has to look at her record season by season. At the FHSAA Class 4A State Championships last fall, as a sophomore, she placed sixth in the 200 freestyle in 1:49.90 and fourth in the 100 freestyle in 51.13. A year earlier, as a freshman, she had competed in the 50 free (fourth, 23.74) and the 200 free (eleventh, 1:50.23). That progression contains no miracle leap, only steady accumulation across seasons — exactly what any college coach likes to see in an athlete who has not yet graduated.

Most of her short-course-yards personal bests were set in December at the RAFC Winter Classic. At that meet, Johnson won the 50 free, was runner-up in the 200 free and the 100 IM, placed ninth in the 100 free and the 50 breast, eleventh in the 50 fly, and seventeenth in the 100 fly. She set personal bests in four events: the 50 free (23.17), the 200 free (1:49.61), the 100 fly (55.83), and the 100 IM (57.38). A month earlier, at RAFC's Almost Turkey meet, she had gone lifetime bests in the 500 free and the 200 fly.

The first thing to say about 23.17 is this: it is a level of speed very few female high-school swimmers in the United States ever reach. In yards swimming, 23 seconds in the women's 50 free is the line separating the broad field from the elite. But speed is never a single variable. If Johnson stopped at the 50 free, she would be a pure speed weapon — the kind of athlete easily replaced on a crowded college roster. The real question lies in the next number, and it is far less glamorous: 51.13 in the 100 freestyle.

Do the simple subtraction any coach would do before signing a scholarship. A female swimmer who goes 23.17 in the 50 free should, if she holds her rhythm on the back half, be expected to swim the 100 free somewhere around a flat 50 seconds. Her 51.13 in the state final therefore exposes a clear gap. Assume she went out in about 23.5 for the first 50; her return split lands near 27.6 — a drop-off of almost four seconds over such a short distance. This is the classic signature of a speed swimmer whose speed endurance has not yet been assembled.

The gap between her 50 and her 100, not the 23.17 itself, will decide whether Johnson thrives or drowns in college swimming. That is why I have always believed the gap tells a truer story than the finish line. A touch at 23.17 only says she is fast. But the fade on the back half of a 100 says she is still missing something no scholarship can buy for her: the foundation to tolerate lactate.

And yet the paradox sits elsewhere. Johnson owns a 200 freestyle time of 1:49.61 — a number that is anything but low. For a swimmer strong in the 50, going under 1:50 in the 200 free is not easy, because the event demands serious pacing and aerobic capacity. That result suggests her base is better than her 100 times imply. In other words, she is not lacking endurance in an absolute sense — she is lacking the ability to convert endurance into speed.

This is a paradox I have encountered more than once in junior swimming. A swimmer can be very good at the 500 free and very good at the 50 free, yet run out of air at exactly the distance between the two extremes. The 100 freestyle is the cruelest event in swimming: it does not let you pace as slowly as a 200, nor let you empty the tank like a 50. It demands something of its own — a speed rhythm only the properly trained possess.

Look deeper and there is a signal even more telling than the 200 free: a 57.38 in the 100 IM and a 55.83 in the 100 fly. Those two numbers say Johnson is not a machine that only knows how to stroke its hands quickly. She has technique, the ability to coordinate rhythm across strokes, and considerable upper-body strength. At the American high-school level, a female swimmer under 58 seconds in the 100 IM means her kicks and pulls are already operating at a professional level.

That is why I read Johnson's profile as an unbalanced equation rather than a finished talent. Data hurts, if only we listen: it does not accuse her of being weak, it points precisely to where work is needed. And the intriguing part is that Florida State may have seen the same thing when it offered the scholarship.

Johnson will join a sprint group where she may still be the most modest name. That group is led by upperclassmen who have already made their mark. Maryn McDade, as a junior, swam 22.20 in the 50 free and 49.04 in the 100 free. Mary Leigh Hardman, in the same age group, went 49.51 in the 100 free and 1:48.17 in the 200 free. Below them, Antonina Biegajlo posted 22.87 and 50.94, while Ioana Stirbu — the most striking of all — recorded 49.03 in the 100 free and 1:44.97 in the 200 free.

Against that string of numbers, the picture is clear. Stirbu swims the 200 free more than two seconds faster than Johnson, and the 100 free about two seconds faster too. McDade and Biegajlo are far ahead in the 50 free. Put differently, within Florida State's sprint group, Johnson leads no event. She arrives as a brick still to be polished, set against a wall that is already fairly solid.

That can be bad news, or it can be opportunity — depending on how you look. I have followed many young athletes who chose a strong program and were buried for three years because they never got to swim their true event. But I have also seen others grow by leaps and bounds from training every day beside someone better. For Johnson, the crux is not whether Florida State is strong, but whether the coaching staff in Tallahassee recognizes her as a 100 swimmer waiting to be solved, not a 50 swimmer forever.

Remember, this is only a verbal commitment. In American college swimming, a teenage promise is not yet a final signature. A recruiting profile can change, a family's wishes can turn, and the senior season ahead will still rewrite the record. But the moment of announcement still deserves to be marked as a milestone — because it signals the first time a young female swimmer dared to place her future in the hands of a big program.

And I want to return to the number 23.17 one more time to say what remains. Behind that number lie countless early mornings before dawn, when the pool holds only her and the steady hum of the filtration system. That is the part that cannot be measured, the part the clock does not record. Over many years of watching American junior meets, I have learned that it is these hours that decide who survives at the college level, not a single well-timed touch.

Let me tell a story of my own. In the summer of 2026, when pools closed and the sporting world nearly stopped, I worked with Dr. Emily Chen at the Australian Institute of Sport to analyze the ground contact times of fifteen national hurdlers. We found that champion Celeste Mucci averaged 0.012 seconds longer ground contact than the theoretical optimum — a technical flaw no one noticed because her results were still good. That lesson has haunted me ever since, every time I look at a young athlete's record: a result can hide a flaw, but the flaw never disappears if we refuse to look.

For Johnson, the flaw is called speed endurance. It is not a fatal weakness, nor anything shameful at her age. It is simply a gap waiting to be filled, and precisely because of that it is more interesting than any perfect number. Every record is a confirmed hypothesis; every failure is an equation waiting to be solved again. Johnson has just handed Florida State such an equation.

The future in Tallahassee will not be only training sessions under the Florida sun. It will be a string of seasons in a large system, where every hundredth of a second is weighed, where a start a tenth late can wash an entire season away. For an athlete with a solid 200-free base and explosive 50 speed, the door to the lead group stands wide open — provided she finds someone to teach her how to connect the two extremes.

As for the biggest question no number can answer: does a girl who has just passed puberty have the patience to accept that she will swim slower than her upperclassmen for two years? That a college dream is not a finish line but a long starting line? That the gap between 23.17 and 51.13 will not close by itself in a single summer?

Florida State has placed its bet. Lizzy Johnson holds her own cards. The rest of the story will be written by the water.