Wondering why a swim appears on a swimmer’s profile but isn’t contributing to your team or regional ranking?
Swimcloud rankings are built to fairly and consistently reflect how athletes perform while officially representing their club or school team, and based on verified meet results. Because of this, not every valid swim is eligible to count toward team or regional rankings—even though the swim may still appear elsewhere on Swimcloud.
Below are the most common reasons this happens.
TL;DR
Only swims that are officially submitted via a meet result file and completed while a swimmer is representing their club or school team count toward team or regional rankings.Unattached swims, All-Star team swims, and manually entered times will still appear on a swimmer’s profile (and may count toward recruiting metrics), but they are never used in public team or regional rankings.
When Swims Don’t Count Toward Team or Regional Rankings
1. All-Star Team Swims (Zone, Select Camp, or Regional Teams)
At certain meets, swimmers compete as part of a temporary All-Star or regional team instead of their home club or school.
These swims:
Appear on the swimmer’s Swimcloud profile
Do not roll up to the swimmer’s club or school team rankings
Do not appear in regional rankings for their home team
This is because the performance officially belongs to the All-Star team, not the swimmer’s primary team.
2. Unattached Swims
Sometimes swimmers compete at meets as “unattached." Swimcloud’s rankings are built in the following order:
Regions are built from teams
Teams are built from swimmers
When a swimmer competes unattached:
There is no team associated with the swim
Without a team, the swim cannot flow into a team or regional rankings
Even though unattached swims may appear in other databases (such as SWIMS or an LSC’s top-times list), Swimcloud rankings require a team connection. As a result, unattached swims appear on the swimmer’s profile but not in team or regional rankings.
3. Manually Entered Times
Swimcloud allows swimmers to manually enter times because not all meet hosts or administrators submit official meet result files. This ensures swimmers can still maintain a complete record of their performances.
Manually entered times:
Appear on the swimmer’s public Swimcloud profile
Count toward the swimmer’s Power Index (PI)
May appear in recruit rankings
However, manually entered times are never used in:
Team rankings
Regional rankings
Public top-times lists
Time-standard tags or qualification markings
This limitation exists to protect the accuracy, fairness, and verification standards of public rankings. Team and regional rankings are built exclusively from officially submitted meet result files, not user-entered data.
How This Impacts Rankings
Team Rankings
Only include swims achieved while the athlete is officially representing their club or school and submitted through an official meet result file.
Regional Rankings
Are built directly from team results. If a swim does not count toward a team, it cannot count toward that team’s region.
Swimmer Profiles
Always display every valid performance—attached, unattached, All-Star, or manually entered. This ensures a swimmer’s complete history is preserved, even when certain swims do not affect rankings.
In Short
If a swimmer is not officially representing their club or school or if a time was manually entered instead of submitted through an official meet result file, that swim will not count toward team or regional rankings.
That said, every swim is always preserved on the swimmer’s Swimcloud profile, ensuring their progress, history, and recruiting visibility are never lost.