PHOENIX, Arizona, May 12. THE Swimming World College Recruit Rankings system just keeps getting deeper and deeper as we work hard to provide the best coverage of recruiting in the nation.
Today, Swimming World is proud to present a dynamic, sortable, user-driven database to continue to slake the unquenchable thirst of our readers for college recruiting content. Go to www.swimmingworldmagazine.com/tym for the new look. If you haven't already done so, enter your own profile regardless of whether you are going to be a freshman, sophomore, junior or senior next season.
In conjunction with Darryn Salt of TakeYourMarks.com, Swimming World has created a system which will allow all high-school age swimmers to enter and maintain their best times FREE of charge. While Swimming World will still keep up with the top swimmers in the nation, any and all swimmers will have the ability to create their own profile, or petition to manage their own profile already set up by Swimming World.
Keeping up with your best times via your own account will help us keep our readers, and college coaches that search the database, up to date on your Swimming World star ranking. These changes will be processed daily, to keep the swimming community updated on a more continual basis.
Additionally, the new profiles allow you to voice public interest in your college choices, and keep the public informed on where you are visiting, who offered you a spot on their team, where you have verbally committed to attending and who you have signed with throughout the exciting recruiting process.
"My expertise in online database systems and Swimming World's knowledge and experience in the college swimming scene seemed like a perfect partnership," Salt said about the new relationship with Swimming World. "I liked the concept of what Swimming World wanted to put together, and it sounded like a good challenge for me. It is always great being involved from the very beginning of an exciting project, and I believe there will be so many swimmers and coaches that will benefit by using the College Recruit Rankings system. It is great working with such a professional partner – one with such innovative visions for the future."
"When we first approached Darryn of TakeYourMarks.com, we were only looking for a way to improve the presentation of the recruiting coverage we were already providing to our readership," Swimming World Managing Editor Jason Marsteller said. "Darryn's expertise in the database field, however, made it a no-brainer that we would be better off forming a long-standing partnership. His technical ability, matched with our passion for the sport, will allow us to continue to innovate when it comes to providing the best swimming-related recruiting content available on the Internet. Today's launch is only the first of many exciting additions that will grow from our partnership with TakeYourMarks.com."
"I believe Swimming World's ranking system is a great resource for both coaches and recruits," University of Texas head women's coach Kim Brackin said. "Besides keeping you updated on what is going on in the recruiting world, it gives some perspective on how a recruit could immediately impact the program within a set of performance criteria. Of course, I look at it as just that – a source of information, because until recruits come in and swim those times or better, it is still just a fast time on paper that they have swum under someone else."
For those that haven't seen the rankings already, here is an explanation of how stars are determined:
6 Star 
: A Final and/or Multiple B Finals
5 Star 
: B Final and/or Multiple Qualifying Marks (Last year's slowest qualifying time per event at DI NCAAs) and/or Multiple U.S. Olympic Trials Cuts
4 Star 
: Qualifying Mark (Last year's slowest qualifying time per event at DI NCAAs) and/or Multiple B Cuts and/or 1 U.S. Olympic Trials Cut
3 Star 
: B Cut and/or USA Swimming Junior National Cut
2 Star 
: National Club Swimming Association Junior National Cut
1 Star 
: Everyone Else
The latest set of rankings is updated based on the 2008 NCAA Division I Championships results.