[Hydraulix989]

"I imagine that people who manage to achieve both peak physical fitness and peak mental ability are rare outliers."

I know quite a few people here in SF that do both. I used to be a state-competitive athlete in Pennsylvania, but I can't even keep up in SF with the times that a lot of my fellow nerds here throw down in Strava (still have a few though, running up the hill on Misson St, one lap around Bernal Heights Park, and running through Almaden Quicksilver Trail San Jose!).

High school athletics is a good way to get into a good college, when you already have academics on par with the majority of applicants (otherwise, it's a crapshoot to get into Ivy League schools with <10% acceptance rate and >90% of the applicants have near-perfect SAT scores).