Being on a swim team, any sports team, certainly has a positive impact. Just not the special routing that a recruited athlete would have, but few activities hold that kind of privilege, and only at the very top levels, just as in sports. There are a lot of activities teams have that show community service, school community participation. So, yes being active in a sport does help the app vs those that have no such activities.
But so does working outside of school , being in choir, drama, dance, etc, etc.
My son is a year around athlete who isn’t going to be doing NCAA sports in college but will actively participate in club sports and intramurals. He’ll be using a lot of the college’s sports resources. Because of the fact that he is a very good varsity athlete in high school, he doesn’t have the time to juggle a lot else. Practice daily, meets weekly, sometimes more. That’s been his life. Admissions, I 'm sure, at the various schools get this. His brothers and cousins mostly had the same sort of schedule, other than one who did go on as a college NCAA athlete. That was a whole other story.