Where I am, in Scandinavia, and I think also in most of continental Europe, sports are decoupled from the schools. You don't have school teams or schools compet

Where I am, in Scandinavia, and I think also in most of continental Europe, sports are decoupled from the schools. You don't have school teams or schools competing against each other, instead various junior sports teams are simply local and geographical, drawing kids from surrounding schools. And junior sports activites are completely extra-curricular. A local team might have its activities at a single school, so as a student you might have your after-school basketball at your school, or another school, it all depends. You still have a lot of people watching professional sports, and working their way up through junior sports, but the "high-school jock" cliché simply does not exist. And, consequently, athletic proficiency isn't mixed with academic proficiency, the school doesn't care about how good a student is at basketball or football or whatever, that's completely outside its interests. And academic scholarships based on athletic skill is unheard of. (Then again, scholarships are pretty unheard of, university education is free... :) )