Way Too Early Recruit Rankings: Boys High School Class Of 2026

By Yanyan Li on SwimSwam

We continue our traditional recruiting coverage with our “Way Too Early” ranks of the upcoming season’s high school junior class. Since top recruits have started giving their verbal commitments earlier and earlier, we’ve moved up our rankings to help give better context to big recruiting announcements.

Before we run over our traditional ranking methodology, we should head off a few counterarguments at the pass:

• Isn’t this too early to have a good read on talent? Aren’t 16-year-old kids still improving? Maybe. On the other hand, coaches are clearly finding roster spots for kids who verbally commit this early. And if we and our readership want to have the most accurate picture of how the recruiting season is playing out, it’ll be useful to have some sort of ranking – even one still very much in flux – to refer to as big-name swimmers commit.
• But recruiting ranks don’t matter. It’s the fast-dropping swimmers and diamonds in the rough that really have the biggest NCAA impact. Not true. There are always fast-rising swimmers who quickly develop into NCAA stars. But there are far less of them than there are elite high school prospects who become high-impact NCAA swimmers. We all love the Cinderella stories, the unranked recruits who flourish into dominators. But even those rags-to-riches stories aren’t as fleshed out if they don’t have a clearly defined setup. These ranks help show us who is most likely to become NCAA standouts… but also contextualize where the eventual breakout stars originally rated compared to peers. If you, your favorite swimmer or your son/daughter isn’t ranked, don’t get mad – see it as the starting point for your/their rise to stardom.
• How accurate can these be with two-plus years of development to go before any of these swimmers compete in the NCAA? Who knows? Predicting the future never has a 100% hit rate. For these ranks, we’re a little less concerned with actual NCAA scoring times than we are in our junior/senior ranks, and probably marginally more interested in “ceilings” – wide event ranges, versatility, etc. But as with any ranking, these are ultimately nothing more than a snapshot in time: what the top of this recruiting class looks like in the moment, with full admission that a lot of these ranks can and will change by the time they finish their senior years.

THE METHODOLOGY

Our goal in these rankings is to reflect what college coaches look for in recruits, based on many years of conversations and coverage.

We focus only on American-based athletes, simply because there is so much uncertainty with international recruits – if they come to the United States, when they’ll come to the States and with what graduating class they should be ranked. Projecting international recruits often becomes more of a discussion of when they’ll first join a college program and not which program they’ll join.

A few other factors that weigh heavily in our rankings:

• Relay Value – Relay points count double in college swimming, and any program needs a strong stable of quality sprinters to fill out all 5 relays with stars. Obviously, a special distance swimmer can easily rank ahead of a very good 100 freestyler, but college swimming generally values a sprint freestyler over a distance swimmer, all other factors being equal.
• Improvements – Actual times carry the most weight by a long shot. But we also keep an eye on a swimmer’s trajectory, especially in deciding between two swimmers with relatively even times.
• Short Course over Long Course – while every club and every swimmer will have a different balance of focus between short course and long course swimming, the NCAA competes in short course yards, and that’s going to be the main factor considered in these rankings. Long course times are another data point for consideration, but we mainly view them through the lens of what a big long course swim could mean for an athlete’s future in short course.
• NCAA scoring ability – NCAAs are the big show for college teams, so we’ve weighted NCAA scoring potential very highly. Swimmers who already have NCAA scoring times wind up mostly filling out the top our of rankings. Since college athletic directors – and by extension coaches – also place high value on conference championships, scoring ability at conference meets is also a factor in our rankings.
• Relative depth in the NCAA and recruiting class – a wealth of elite depth nationwide in one stroke or discipline makes a big difference in what times are considered more valuable in that event. Events rise at different rates in the NCAA, but when one event gets extremely deep and fast at the college level, it makes high school prospects in those events a little less valuable, relatively, with lots of other veteran options. In the same way, a recruiting class stacked with swimmers in butterfly, for example, would make each butterflier a little less sought-after in the market, with lots of other recruiting options able to provide similar production.

Of course, there’s no way to predict the future, and the most concrete data we have to go on are cold, hard times. These rankings in no way mean that all of these 20 swimmers will be NCAA standouts, and they certainly don’t mean that no swimmer left off this list will make big contributions at the NCAA level.

THIS CLASS

• Depth primarily in freestyle, 200 fly
• Weaknesses in backstroke, IM, and the 200 breast
• Top two swimmers way above the rest

After two years of ranking prodigies who have made names for themselves at a young age such as Kaii Winkler, Daniel Diehl, Thomas Heilman, and Maximus Williamson, we shift to the class of 2026, which is a much more lower-profile class. However, that doesn’t mean it is void of stars.

Top-ranked swimmer Baylor Stanton has the fastest 200 back time we’ve ever seen from a high school sophomore, and yet it seems like he’s gone under the radar. However, he’s bound to make a name for himself soon, being extremely versatile and head-over-heels better than the rest of his classmates. Then theres the No. 2-ranked Gabriel Manteufel, the next distance phenom to come from the Sandpipers of Nevada. He’s already posting times capable of scoring at NCAAs, and is faster than his club teammate Luke Ellis (the fastest high schooler ever in the 1650 free) was as a sophomore.

However, the prominence of Stanton and Manteufel doesn’t hide how the class still has many weaknesses. Aside from Stanton, there are zero swimmers wh0 have broken 48 in the back, and only one swimmer who has broken 1:46. We were only able to place one swimmer in the “Best of the Rest” IM category. Louis Joos‘ 200 breast time is the slowest class-leading time in the event that we’ve seen since first ranking sophomores in 2018. That being said, there’s still plenty of depth in the sprint events and butterfly, which explains why so many of the top 20 swimmers swim free or fly.

But without further ado, let’s get started with these rankings.

TOP TIMES IN THE CLASS OF 2026

**The 1000 free isn’t an event at the Division I NCAA Championships, but is swum instead of the 1650 in many Division I dual meets and is part of the NCAA program in Division II.

With that out of the way, let’s get to our rankings.

Disclaimer: there are a lot of high school sophomores in the country, and no really good, complete, 100% accurate listing of them all. If you don’t see your favorite swimmer on the list, feel free to politely point them out in the comments. There’s a chance that we disagree with your assessment of their spot in the top 20, and so long as it’s done civilly, there’s no problem with differences of opinions. There’s also a chance that we’ve simply missed a no-brainer (we’ve taken every precaution to avoid that), and if that happens, we want to make sure we correct it.

BEST OF THE REST

Some additional names that came up in our research. For the purposes of space, we won’t include every top event for these athletes, but just a few of their standouts. Verbal commitments are listed where they’ve been reported. Each of these athletes is still an extremely high-level recruit:

Where noteworthy, long course best times included in italics.

Sprint Free:

• Miles Blackson-Dunbar (20.1/44.8)
• Finnegan Martin (20.2/44.9)
• Jason Sugihara (20.8/44.5)
• Timothy Lee (20.7/44.7/1:39.1, 1:49.7 2IM)
• Brody Engelstad (20.4/44.6)
• Nathan Foncu (44.7/1:37.9)

Distance Free:

• Grant Lilly (1:38.6/4:23.1)
• Alex Parent (4:28.6/15:14.3)
• Cooper Zakorchemny (4:28.9/15:24.11, 8:07/15:24)
• Ethan Linville (1:38.2/4:26.5)
• Lewis Zhang (1:38.8/4:26.7)
• Grayden Barker (1:39.3/4:25.0)

Backstroke:

• Wyatt Vitiello (1:46.1)
• Jack Chiappetta (49.5/1:46.3, 1:49.2 2FL)
• Chase Knopf (1:46.7)
• Liam Carrington (49.5/1:46.8)
• Luan Barnard (48.4)

Breaststroke:

• Elonzo Santos (54.7/2:01.3)
• Matt Vatev (54.8/2:00.3)
• Isaac Carsel (54.91/2:01.6)
• Remon Mann (55.0/1:59.7)
• Gerhardt Hoover (55.5/1:59.9, 1:49.3/3:55.4 IMs)

Butterfly:

• Ryan Quinn (48.3/1:48.6, 1:39.9 2FR)
• Austin Sorg (48.0)
• Nathan Carr (48.6/1:46.9)
• Caleb Kattau (48.9/1:49.1, 54.0/2:01.2)

IM:

• Alex Grocholski (3:54.68, 4:24.5 5FR)

Honorable Mentions

Whitaker Steward— Tsunami Swim Team of KC — Kearney High School — Liberty, MO

Best Times:

• 200 free: 1:39.11
• 500 free: 4:26.14
• 1000 free: 9:10.44
• 1650 free: 15:12.96
• 400 IM: 3:55.57

Steward stands out for having the second-fastest mile time in the class. It may pale in comparison to Manteufel’s time, but compared to other classes, that 15:12.96 is pretty impressive. It’s just two seconds off of Matt Marsteiner’s 15:10.71 that led the class of 2024 as sophomores, and also would have led the class of 2023.

The mile is by far Steward’s strongest event, but he has formidable times in the 500 free, 400 IM and 200 free as well. If he continues on his improvement trajectory, he will become a phenomenal distance swimmer.

Louis Joos— Bolles School Sharks — Bolles School — Jacksonville, FL

Best Times:

• 100 breast: 56.02
• 200 breast: 1:59.64 (best in class)

Joos is the class’s top 200 breaststroker in a very weak 200 breast class, but that’s enough for him to get an honorable mention. However, we didn’t put him in the top 20 because of the large disparity between his best 100 and 200 breast times.

This past season, Joos improved from a time of 2:04.93 to 1:59.64 in the 200 breast but didn’t see as big of an improvement in the 100, where he dropped from 57.27 to 56.02. If he can take a big leap in the 100 next season, he could easily be the top all-around breaststroker in the class.

Henry Lyness— Center Grove Aquatic Club — Center Grove High School — Greenwood, IN

Best Times:

• 100 back: 48.06
• 200 back: 1:48.21

In a class where only four swimmers have broken 49 seconds in the 100 back, Lyness stands out as the second-fastest in the event, as well as someone on the brink of going 47-point. In one season, he’s dropped over two seconds in the event, as his best time prior to this season was 50.49. He also had a near two-second drop in his 200 back, though he’s not as strong in that race as he is in the short-distance backstroke event. He’s only been as fast as 49.83 in the 100 fly, but his long course best of 55.74 indicates that he could be a bit faster in yards and pick the race up as a third event.

Brandon Ha — DART Swimming — Angelo Rodriguez — Fairfield, CA

Best Times: