Filled in on save.
You don’t type the roster times, the academics, or the cost.
The spreadsheet works—until recruiting starts moving.
On The Board is a swim recruiting list that does the organizing for you.
Build my list with Match Add schools I already know
Match intake is public. Create a free account when you’re ready to see your matches.
Your spreadsheet knows exactly what you typed into it.
This one knows a few things on its own.
Places the swimmer’s time.
Scorer, Contributor, or Depth against the current roster, then where it landed at last season’s championships.
Knows whose move it is.
You set the coach stage. The list works that out for you.
Spots the schools going quiet.
Three weeks with no recorded contact, and it says which ones.
The list doesn’t break. It quietly goes out of date.
In September that’s harmless. The list is twelve schools, nothing has happened yet, and everything in it is still true. Then two coaches write back, one asking for a transcript. A third goes quiet. Your swimmer goes 49.1 in the 100 Fly, and half of what’s in those cells is a month behind.
By hand
- You look up the roster times yourself, off whatever roster page you can find.
- Nothing changes unless you change it.
- The coach emails are in your inbox. The date you sent them is in your memory.
- A new best time means editing every row that mentions it.
Done for you
- The roster times, academics, and cost arrive attached to the school.
- The next move is read off the coach stage, so the list tells you rather than asks you.
- Coach contacts, notes, visits, and next steps sit on the school itself, not in your inbox.
- Save as many schools as you want. There’s no cap.
Both are lists. One of them you have to build and maintain yourself.
Not sure whether you need a tool or a consultant? We wrote that comparison down.
You save the school. On The Board does the lookup.
This is the research families rebuild by hand, one browser tab at a time. It’s already here, and it’s free to read whether or not you ever save anything.
Current roster times
Where a swimmer’s time sits against the roster that’s on the team right now, event by event.
Academics and the major
What the school offers in the major your swimmer is considering, beside the swim evidence instead of three tabs away.
Cost and school facts
Tuition, acceptance rate, location, size. The facts you’d otherwise pull off four different pages.
What’s missing
If a fact isn’t published for a school, the space stays empty. Nothing gets filled in with a guess.
Keep reading
Two ways schools get on the list.
Most families use both.
Start from Match
Enter your swimmer’s times and what matters to your family: class year, intended major, academics, location, cost. Match sorts the schools into Strong, Good, and Worth Considering and tells you why each one landed where it did. Create a free account when you’re ready to see them, then save the ones worth keeping.
Start from the schools you already know
Open the School Finder and browse 1,000+ programs across D1, D2, D3 by division, conference, state, major, tuition, and size. Save any school straight from the directory.
Either way, the school lands in the same list.
The part only your family can fill in.
The research arrives on its own. What happened between you and the coach doesn’t, and no product can look that up for you. So you type it once. From there the list works off it: the coach stage drives the next move, and the contact date drives the section below.
In the sample below, Williams replied, so it’s your move. Stanford has your email and hasn’t answered. Kenyon you haven’t written to yet. Open any row to see what sits behind it.
Example · Recruiting List
Your recruiting list
9 schools · Click a row to open its workspace.
100 Free · 43.87 · 100 Breast · 56.44 · 50 Free · 21.55
One of your two Reach schools was last contacted more than three weeks ago.
University of Texas · 26 days
SchoolTarget / reachSwim fitCoach stageNext move
Williams College
D3 · NESCAC · Williamstown, MA
Target
100 Free · Scorer
Top 8 at NESCAC champs
Coach responded
Your move
Stanford University
D1 · ACC · Stanford, CA
Reach
200 Free · Depth
Outside top 16 at ACC champs
Email sent
Waiting on them
Kenyon College
D3 · NCAC · Gambier, OH
Likely
100 Fly · Contributor
Top 16 at NCAC champs
Not contacted
—
Georgia Tech
D1 · ACC · Atlanta, GA
Target
100 Free · Contributor
Top 16 at ACC champs
Call scheduled
Date set
University of Texas
D1 · SEC · Austin, TX
Reach
200 Free · Depth
Outside top 16 at SEC champs
No response
Your move
Against 2026 conference championship results.
What each school carries
Target / Likely / Reach
your read on where the school sits.
My interest · Their interest
Interested, Maybe, Unlikely. Yes, Maybe, No.
Coach stage
Not contacted, Questionnaire submitted, Email sent, Coach responded, Call scheduled, In discussion, Visit planned, No response, Not pursuing.
Visit
Not planned, Interested, Scheduled, Completed, Not needed.
Next move
read off the coach stage, not typed: Your move, Waiting on them, In discussion, Date set.
Coach contacts, notes, last contacted, next step
yours to write.
The list notices when a school goes quiet.
Recruiting slips in the boring way. Nobody decides to drop a school.
Your list reads the contact dates you entered and opens with one sentence:
One of your two Reach schools was last contacted more than three weeks ago.
When the dates are current, it says so instead:
Every school on your list has been contacted in the last three weeks.
What it doesn’t do
It doesn’t read your email, log contact for you, send reminders, or tell you what to do about it. It counts the dates you typed in, and a school with no date isn’t counted at all.
What swim parents say about keeping the list.
“On The Board gave us a much easier way to organize our daughter’s recruiting list than our own spreadsheet. Being able to move schools up and down on our list, track notes, and see where things stand with each school has made the process much easier to manage.”
“Honestly, the amount of time this saved us on research alone made it worth it. Trying to dig through individual college websites and program stats manually was turning into a full-time job.”
“I'm usually terrible with new apps, but this was really easy to figure out right away. It’s made tracking and organizing our target D1 programs so much less overwhelming.”
“Navigating the recruiting process felt totally chaotic before finding this. It genuinely gives you all the tools you need to stay on top of things.”
“We’ve been using it for a bit now and it’s been a huge help. Plugging in my swimmer’s specific events and times to see realistic target schools gave us instant clarity.”
Questions about running the list
Do I need a spreadsheet for swim recruiting?
You need a list. A spreadsheet is one way to keep one, and plenty of families do it that way for a long time. It holds up while the list is mostly static. It gets unreliable once coaches start replying, one goes quiet, someone asks for an updated transcript, and your swimmer’s times change. At that point the work isn’t building the columns, it’s keeping them true.
What should be on a swim recruiting list?
Two layers. The school layer: current roster times for your swimmer’s events, the academic programs, cost, location, size, and the reason the school is on the list at all. Then the family layer, which nobody can look up for you: coach contacts, what stage each conversation is at, whether a visit is planned, notes from calls, when you last talked, and what happens next. On The Board fills in the first layer when you save a school so you only have to write the second.
When should we start the list?
Whenever tracking it in your head stops working — usually once there are more than a handful of schools and someone has written back. Earlier is fine if you’re only browsing; the development curves on On The Board cover ages 13–14 through 17–18, so there’s something useful to look at well before a swimmer’s times are final. Contact rules for coaches vary by division and change over time, so check the current NCAA rules rather than a blog post.
How many schools should be on it?
There isn’t a number worth defending, and anyone who gives you one is guessing about your swimmer. Saving on On The Board is unlimited, so keep the list long while you’re still narrowing and let it get shorter as conversations get real. The useful question isn’t how many schools are on it, it’s how many you could say something true about today.
How is this different from a recruiting spreadsheet template?
A template gives you the columns. You still fill in every cell, and you fill them in again when the season rolls over. Here the school side arrives with the school: current roster times, the academic programs, cost, and school facts, already attached to the row. Your part is the part only you have — the coach conversations, the notes, and what happens next.
What does it cost?
Match intake is public: you can enter times and priorities before signing in. A free account is required before personalized results appear, and those results and the reasons behind them are free. Saving is unlimited. The recruiting fields — coach contact, status, notes, next steps — are editable on the first three schools you save; later schools stay saved and visible with those fields read-only. One $29 payment makes them editable across the whole list. Nothing recurs.
Start from wherever your list is now.
If you already know which schools you’re looking at, add them. If you’re still working that out, start with Match and save what looks right.