Apply! Your counselor is wrong. You may not be admitted but it won’t be because an athlete was recruited at your school.
My daughter really struggled with the whole athletic recruitment part of the college admissions game. She was not athletic at all (spent her time in theater, music and journalism), but really resented the conversations she overheard in her classes—“oh, Princeton’s coach says he really wants me on the team but I’m committed to Stanford already. Maybe I’ll change my mind” (not even joking, this was an actual conversation she overheard from a kid she knew to be less academically qualified than she was, at least in her mind).
Luckily, none of this matters once you have your plans and you get out into the world. She hasn’t thought twice about where her high school classmates ended up and high school itself is quickly fading in the rear view mirror, as it should.