Thanks for offering to share your experience! What are your recommendations for preparing over the summer, physically and in terms of Navy knowledge, any songs or sayings that should be memorized in advance? What does orientation involve? Tips for balancing school, ROTC, and sports? At your school, do sports team workouts/practices take the place of ROTC PT or are they done in addition?
preparing over the summer: no matter where you go, PT is important. The naval academy pushup/running plans are super helpful, whether you're going to the naval academy or not. as far as knowledge, again, this might differ by unit but i went in knowing nothing and was provided with the information to study, but you may have a leg up if you're familiar with your general orders, sailor's creed, navy (and for us, marine corps) rank structures, and chain of command.
orientation for us was a little short and actually unconventional even for our unit, but due to extenuating circumstances we did ours on campus, and it consisted a lot of drilling. we PTed as well, of course, and ran a PRT, but there was a lot of yelling.
as far as balancing school and ROTC, it doesn't seem to be a problem, but throwing sports in there is a little difficult. i have a friend who is a midn who is also doing varsity track, and he has about 4 hour long practices every afternoon in addition to his ROTC responsibilities. some people have tried and failed to do it, but others, like him, are getting by just fine. it really depends on you as a person, but it's definitely doable. in our unit, we have three PTs a week: a mandatory one, remedial, and one for anyone who didn't score excellent on all three parts of the PRT. if, by extension of being an athlete, you have superior fitness, you would only have to come to one PT out of the three, but if not, you would still be required to come to the PTs you didn't qualify to get off of, since, your first priority here is commissioning. this could be different elsewhere, but this is what it's like here.