My DD changed sports. She left her USNA NCAA team at the end of her plebe year to pursue an aggressive service selection goal. She ended up playing intramural football to close out her plebe year and might have played at the beginning of her 3C year (she'd send me vids/pics of stuff she thought was funny at her games). The thing is, the team sports stuff seemed to stop during her 3C year. She was still running/lifting, and she had her base PQ tests to take, but the sports-team stuff just stopped. It's not like she was a "bookish loner"; she was involved in a ton of stuff and loving life at USNA, but the sports teams just faded out of the picture.
Question: Are mids required or expected to participate in a team sport after their Plebe year? 3C year? 2Cyear?
Adding this for recruited athletes drawn to this thread title: DD was a recruited NCAA Div1 athlete at USNA and had a strong plebe year with her team. I know that telling her coach she was done was the hardest single thing DD did while she was at the USNA. She still loved her sport and felt guilty about leaving her team. The USNA coaches in her program couldn't have been better when she told them. They explored ways she might stay with the team. When DD's reasoning was made clear, they told her she was a good teammate, said that she would be missed, wished her well, and said if they could ever help her in the future, she only needed to ask. DD walked out of that meeting feeling good about herself, her status at USNA intact, and a lot more time to spend on new opportunities for growth that she'd never conceived of on the day she chose NAVY. I am sure USNA coaches deal with athletes leaving all the time demands on USNA students are significant, but so is the list of opportunities to do cool new stuff.
For HS athletes weighing a "Full-Ride" somewhere vs. an appointment to the USNA, it's worth considering what happens if/when you discover that you need to use those 40++ hours a week spent on practice, travel, workouts, Etc. ....on something else. Of the girls on DDs team in high school, the only not-so-happy stories involve 2 athletes committed to full rides at expensive private schools and found by their sophomore year that they'd lost interest/spark for their sport. The loss of scholarship $$$ was what kept these two on their respective teams; investing time and energy long past the end of interest in their sport. I also remember a young man in his Jr year at Stanford telling me his single best day that year had been the day an MD told him his back required him to leave the Stanford Crew Team. The injury had allowed him to leave the team and keep his scholarship; he could be a normal student, AND he could afford to stay at Stanford. Jumping at the most prestigious Full Ride can have its downside.