Swim. You may be correct in your interpretation of the rules. However, note that the “voluntary” practices (sometimes called captains practice) don’t count. Sure, those practices are not mandatory; and for those few who decide that the word “voluntary” carries with it the dictionary definition, they learn that their role on the team is at the end of the bench.
The reality in major sports (and most sports) - including the Ivy League - is that the programs have all learned to tabulate the hours in a way to avoid the limits. For example, training room time, warm-ups, travel time, all workouts not supervised by the coaching staff, etc., do not count towards the limit.
In the off season, S averaged well over 20 hours in his sport; during the season - counting travel time - he easily devoted 50 - 60 hours a week. Those hours all impacted his ability to purely focus on academics. In exchange for that impact, he learned the soft skills not taught in the class room but demanded in the real world. He discovered that many many employers valued those soft skills more than the GPA he sacrificed. (A pretty standard question in interviews is to describe “a failure you have experienced.” I cannot imagine an athlete who could not spend hours telling stories of their failures; what happens after a failure is a true measure of a person. Every athlete has been driven to their knees by their failures; and gotten up in an attempt to compete and win.)
I don’t know if the speculation of several posters that GPAs of Ivy athletes are below the class average is correct; I don’t know the point of the GPA argument; I do know that EVERY teammate of my S (except those who are now playing professionally) got their dream jobs; I do know that they were very coveted in the real world in competing for jobs against non-athletes.
To a college athlete (particularly in D1), virtually every day is spent working on an aspect of their sport; there are no “mental health” days; no “it’s too cold or rainy to get out of bed” days. There is always a better athlete stalking their spot. There is always one more exercise, one more drill, one more film, needed to get better. And, the improvement is always in small minute increments (as opposed to being able to cram a semesters worth of material in a few all nighters). Athletes have played the “long game” in reaching their positions in college - in most cases over a decade of small incremental steps add up to becoming a college athlete. While a few have God-given talent, the overwhelming number of college athletes simply out worked and out desired the other 90%+ of the HS athlete class. The few who were good enough to compete in college (and especially D1) are as elite to their peers as someone who scores a 30 on their ACT.
Employers understand this; employers reward that kind of dedication. In the case of Miss, the team average was just a bit below the general student body - so close, in fact, that getting a “B” instead of a “C” once a year for four years is what makes the difference. Many employers would chose the person who worked a full time, physical job and sacrificed that “B.”
(I won’t even get into the question of what exactly do most college majors teach that translates directly to the real world. But, IMHO, EVERY college athlete develops those skills virtually every day in every way - through their sport.)