Saw this post (below) and made me wonder if any stats like this exist for other universities with selective admissions rates. How important is athletics when not actually signing for a sport in the college you are accepted?
"West Point and athletes, it is interesting to note from the links @ChoatieMom posted:
Class of 2020
Admitted: 1302
Varsity athletes in HS: 1294 99.4% of those admitted
Team Captains in HS: 826 63% of those admitted"
Please note that the physical requirements of the service academies highly favor students who are extremely fit. Passing a fitness assessment as well as a thorough medical exam is 2/3rds of the requirement to become “3Q” (qualified academically, physically, and medically). Along with a congressional nomination, a candidate MUST be 3Q before his/her application can even go to the academy admissions table. Obviously, this is not the case for civilian universities as level of fitness is not an admissions requirement, so you would not expect the percentage of athletes to be anywhere near the SA numbers at any other type of college.
Go Blue! Unfortunately, U-M is one of the schools our son turned down for West Point. 
I have great admiration for West Point! Your original post got me thinking about the admission process in general, and specifically a holistic one like U of M. If everyone is academically similar, to what capacity do varsity sports and their leadership play in admission selection?
You need to separate the 2. Leadership is not synonymous with varsity sports. Additionally, do not conflate leadership with a leadership position; one can demonstrate leadership without having a title. As an example: In the NHL, each team starts the season with a 23 man roster. Generally, each team will also have a captain and 2 alternate captains. Does that mean that the other 20 guys are not leaders on the ice and/or in the locker room? No. Vets mentor rookies, as an example. Additionally, in the NHL, goalies cannot be captains or alternates (well, they can, but it’s a longer explanation that I’m not getting into). But nobody should suggest that Sergei Bobrovsky or Braden Holtby or Henrik Lundqvist are not leaders.
Also not that putting leadership positions in one’s EC’s means squat, IMO, without backup, which often comes through recs.
Now, as far as varsity sports: if one is not a recruited athlete, it’s just an EC, IMO - no better and no worse than any other EC with a similar time commitment. I highly doubt that any AO ever said, “What a great applicant! If only he had played a varsity sport instead of wasting time in drama club, we would have admitted him. Sadly though, it’s the reject pile.”
I find this a very interesting post. My son’s high school gave the kids a choice years ago to either do a sport for sophomore /junior /senior year or continue taking gym class. This is the top academic school in the state. Their theory was trying to get these high academic kids to get some exercise and join a team. There were many studies at the time correlating sports to college admissions approvals as well. . Well… Like over 90 % of the students joined a team since if you didn’t have to take gym class you could take another academic class instead. This resulted in actually some state level participation with good competition. Also showing commitment to anything for 3-4 years is positive for a college application and in theory makes a more well rounded applicant. I think this is where they were going with this. My son would of never joined the throw track team and done discus and shot put. He actually improved every year and used this as an example of something hard to over come with persistence and dedication to training. He also became a varsity leader and spoke about helping the younger kids on the team showing leadership. Mix this with peer to peer math tutoring etc etc. I think it does help to make a more complete applicant. It also gave these highly academic kids confidence that they could succeed even in sports.
Coming at this from a different angle; how many accepted applicants do you believe have a varsity sport contained within their EC list?