Knowledge Base — Swimmer of the Week and power points

The one thing coaches need to know

Upload your results before the week is published.

The week ends Sunday at 11:59 PM, but it isn't published straight away — by default the award is published on Tuesday at noon (an administrator can set the day and time for your conference), so a weekend meet whose results go up on Monday still counts. Results uploaded after the publish moment have missed that week completely. They still count for rankings, best times and records — but never for Swimmer of the Week.

How swims are compared: power points

You can't compare a 50 freestyle to a 500 freestyle by looking at the times, or a girls' 100 breaststroke to a boys' 200 IM. Power points put every swim on one scale, so the best swim of the week is simply the highest number.

Every event has a base time — a reference performance. Your swim is scored against it:

`` points = 1000 × (base time ÷ your time)³ ``

• Swim exactly the base time → 1000 points
• Swim faster → more than 1000
• Swim slower → fewer than 1000

Why it's cubed

So that being near the base isn't enough — excellence is rewarded steeply:

A 5% improvement is worth 166 points, not 50. The award should go to a genuinely outstanding swim, not to whoever was closest to average in a fast event.

An example

Base time for the girls' 50 freestyle is 25.00:

Ada wins — and would also beat a boy's 913-point 200 IM, because the two swims are now directly comparable.

Which swims count

A swim is eligible when it is:

• Individual — relays are not scored
• Official — not a DQ, scratch, no-show or exhibition swim
• Timed — it has a finish time
• In an event that has a base time — see Why isn't my swimmer on the page? below
• Uploaded before the week was published — by default Tuesday at noon

Each swimmer is represented by their single best swim of the week. Swimming five events doesn't stack points — your best one stands for you.

The week, and when it is published

The week runs Monday through Sunday 11:59 PM. Which week a swim belongs to is decided by the date of the meet.

But whether it counts at all is decided by when it was uploaded. Two different dates:

The week is published on a day and time set by an administrator — Tuesday at 12:00 PM unless your conference has chosen otherwise, on the conference's own clock. Anything uploaded before that moment counts; results uploaded after it are never considered. They don't join the published week, and they don't roll into the next one.

This is what makes the award mean something. Without it, a file uploaded three weeks late could unseat a swimmer whose award had already been announced.

Each conference keeps its own clock, so a Pacific conference's Sunday evening is still inside its week when an Eastern conference has already closed.

Who competes against whom

Awards are given at several levels, one per gender at each:

A swimmer wins at every level she qualifies for. The best swim in 4A Region 2 may also be the best swim in 4A, and the best that the whole conference saw that week — in which case she takes all three. Each level picks its own best swim, so every level always has a winner and a small region is never left empty.

Which team you swim for

Your bracket comes from the team you represented in that swim, as its affiliation stood on the day of the meet.

So a swimmer who races for her club during the year and her high school in the school season has her club swims scored in her LSC's brackets and her school swims in her school's conference — with nothing to set up. A school that moves from 4A to 5A is judged in the classification it actually competed in that week.

Who hosted the meet doesn't matter. A school swimming somebody else's invitational is still swimming for its own conference.

Why there's usually no national award

A national governing body doesn't normally give one, because its members don't share a calendar — some states swim in the fall, others in the winter or spring. A national award in November would compare swimmers against nobody, and whichever association happened to be in season would take it every week until its season ended.

Minimum field

A bracket with one entrant would produce a "winner" who beat nobody. So a bracket needs at least three scored swimmers before it awards anything; below that it gives no award that week.

Each bracket is judged separately, so a thin region can fall short while the classification above it — which pools every region — still awards normally.

Every card shows how many swims were in contention, so you can see how strong the field was.

Reading the page

There are two tabs.

Swimmers of the Week — the finished award for the week just ended. It is frozen and will not change. This is what "the Swimmer of the Week" means until the next week is published. Use the week picker to look back through history.

This week so far — the week in progress, scored live and marked Provisional. Every upload can still change it, right up to the moment the week is published.

Awards are grouped the way you'd read them: each conference heads its own section with its overall winners, then each classification, with its regions underneath. You can filter by organization and by conference.

Two labels worth knowing:

• Final — the week closed normally.
• Reconstructed — the week was rebuilt afterwards from results imported later, and was not contested live at the time. Shown for the historical record, and marked so it isn't mistaken for an award that was actually won that week.

A swimmer who has opted out of being named publicly is anonymised here as everywhere else. They still earn the ranking and the points.

Why isn't my swimmer on the page?

In order of likelihood:

1. The event has no base time. Nothing scores without one, and the swim drops out silently. Ask an administrator to check power-point coverage for that event.
2. The results were uploaded after the week was published (by default Tuesday noon).
3. The swim wasn't marked Official — a DQ, scratch, no-show or exhibition swim.
4. The bracket had fewer than three swimmers, so no award was given.
5. It was a relay. Relays aren't scored.

Common questions

Why did somebody with a slower time beat a faster one? Different events. Power points compare each swim to its own event's base time, not to each other's clock.

Can one swimmer win several awards in the same week? Yes — region, classification and conference, if the same swim was the best at each. That's intended.

We uploaded late. Can it still be counted? Not into a closed week — that would unsettle an award already published. If the original result was genuinely wrong, an administrator can recompute the week.

Why did our conference give no award this week? Usually because nothing scored (no base times for the events swum), or the field was under the minimum.

Do relays count? No. The award is individual.