We are going though a variation of this as well for my child, in a non-recruitable sport. First, is your sport recruitable or non-recruitable? That makes a difference. If recruitable, contact coaches at some of the schools that interest your kid to see what path previous students took to get to that school.
In my kid’s case, we are doing an independent study school with online dual enrollment college classes. The goal is to graduate with an Associate’s Degree when graduating from high school. In our case, because my kid travels a lot to compete and train, lab sciences are not an option. (The minimum bio/chem/physics courses were taken earlier in high school.) So to demonstrate rigor in another way, a DE AD is our wonky path. It’s not perfect, but when you can’t be on campus all the time, you have to figure something out.
Other students in my kid’s sport study entirely with an online curriculum. Stanford has an online high school some of them use, but it’s a competitive application process and costs enough money that we didn’t try it out due to paying for training expenses.
My kid’s senior year is next year and we might have to figure another school option due to exhausting most of our options at the current independent study school. It’s a puzzle. Hope that we can figure something out.
We do plan on applying to colleges next year. If we have to take a gap year and apply again, we will figure out which schools allow it and which don’t. I’ve heard that it’s easier to apply while in high school. Your case, however, may be different.