They don’t have organized “team practices” 5-6 days a week but they are absolutely practicing that sport in some capacity 5-6 times a week if they want to be elite (e.g. hitting/pitching lessons with private coach for bball and softball) |
Metros is the biggest HS swim meet in DC/MD area: championship meet for all Maryland publics and privates (bigger than MD state champs bc includes private schools/akin to Va state champs, imo). |
You are kidding yourself if you think only swimmers practice that much. My 8 year old DD was on a soccer team where kids trained 5 days a week plus games on weekends. Kids and parents were all in. We left but there were tons of kids to take that spot. |
And training is private sessions, strength and agility. |
On the flip side, swimmers can do training that will improve their athleticism and explosiveness without necessarily playing a different sport. I played a team sport at school and swam club through 10th grade, before focusing on just swimming. The team sport wasn’t hard enough to make me a better athlete. We spent a lot of time waiting in line doing drills. The focused dryland training done with my swim coaches in late HS and then in college was MUCH harder and better for developing my athleticism. We would do very high intensity work in a short time. We would also combine it with swimming sometimes for example sprint a 25, get out and do pushups, dive back in and sprint a 25. |