My DD was in your position at the beginning of her Junior year, she had spent her Sophomore year overseas as an exchange student and came back to her activities and did not have any leadership at that point. She had swam and danced (club as well as school) before she left and when she got back, realized that she was not really that passionate or excited about either of them anymore. Some of the things she was told (advice from someone who WAS an Army ROTC recruiter at a local school, so don't know if the advice is current), but she followed it and her feedback has been good at the visits at 4 schools and her PMS interview. We will see come Spring if it pays off. She was told to not focus on trying to "check boxes" but to get involved in things she is passionate about and stick with it. She is passionate about church, swimming, and kids. So she became a group swim instructor (working gives you Leadership credit too), and because she did well with kids with special needs, they have her do all the private lessons for kids with special needs. She speaks fluent German and loves helping others, so she became a tutor. In the summer, to get more hours at the pool, she became a lifeguard. She wants to be a nurse so she applied and got a position as a student volunteer (has 3 hour shift a week) at our hospital. She has always enjoyed youth group at church so she applied to be a middle school group leader, and now has a group of 10 seventh grade girls she leads, and then also got placed on the high school leadership team, where she is one of 12 peer leaders for a group of several hundred high school students. When the church said they needed more people that could be one on one buddies for kids with autism in the church daycare, she volunteered, and she does that weekly too. She also added cross country for fun, to have another sport at school, and started a goal to run a 10K a month, and has seen her times get better each race.
These might not be your typical leadership roles, or even the typical varsity sports, and there are not boxes to mark, but starting in her junior year, knowing this was the path she wanted, to pursue a military career, she took the advice to follow her passions and get more involved in things that she was interested in and not try to just check boxes. She could of been president of her German Club, but knew she didn't have the time or desire to do that, so she passed (but that would of been a box to check). She was nominated for Girls State, but it would of meant missing a family vacation out of the country. She just didn't stress too much about fitting into a mold, but doing things that she enjoyed and that also helped make her a more rounded and accomplished person. Scholarship or not, I know she has really enjoyed the last two years and have learned a lot about leadership in the process. She also got advice to take the German club president role, to try to get more "traditional" boxes checked on the application. That just didn't feel right to her, so we will see if it pays off or not. There are other people on this board way more experienced than we are at this, and she doesn't have an answer yet, so take this with a grain of salt. The only thing I will add is I feel she added a lot to her resume in a year in half doing things that interested her instead of doing things she thought the Board would like.