I’m passionate about soccer meaning I love playing it and doing anything related to the sport. At the same time, I’m also interested in the medical field and it’s currently my career oriented interest (though this may or may not change later on). I’m not a superstar player by any way unfortunately and I’m not in a national or international ranked team, does not being any of these mean HYPS won’t care about this EC at all? I’ve seen people spend time with soccer and other sports such as them creating a clinic to help kids learn it, or even be a assistant to the coach and keep track of team stats, could this be a meaningful EC to colleges? Or should I just focus on the medical related activities for now and forget about soccer since I’m not a superstar or in a high ranked team? I’m asking this because I was told colleges don’t care about sports at all unless you’re in a national level or international level, and I really don’t want to be wasting my time on meaningless EC’s to colleges
Meaningless ECs are ECs that are meaningless to you. Ideally, you should look to see if you can balance medical ECs with soccer if you want to continue soccer. It’s not that they don’t care about sports ECs, it’s just that sports ECs, if you are not a recruited athlete, are just another EC. But there are life skills that you can learn from soccer (as well as other ECs) which can make you an attractive candidate.
If you do NOT play soccer at a Division 1 level, then your sport is just like any other EC such debate team, theater, music, art, yearbook, etc.
Admissions looks at a student’s extracurricular activities to gauge the level of commitment they have made to something beyond the classroom. The idea is that a student’s energy, drive, determination, and commitment is a transferable skill – something that could be transferred to another activity in college, or something later on in life.
So if you love soccer, KEEP playing it! Do NOT just focus on being a premed dweeb, as that’s the fastest road to rejection at any college. Your interest in soccer will show dimensionality – something that all colleges, not just HYPS, look for. And who knows, you could end up playing soccer at a “club sport” or “recreational” level (basically JV) for HYPS or another college: https://recreation.gocrimson.com/recreation/club_sports/active_clubsports