If you live in a country with Little League, you have seen this sports experiment. While it might be rather harmless in a sport like swimming, in baseball and softball, it is downright dangerous. (I realize that puffin was likely being facetious about the sports, but just a warning about doing this...)
Little League is a great place for kids to start, but for the most part, Little League is not good baseball/softball. In the last twenty years or so, some trophy hunting coaches realized this and decided to get together groups of travel players to play the "tournament ball" part of Little League - you see the 11 and 12 year old kids in Williamsport each year in the Little League World Series (and there are other World Series for other ages, held elsewhere) - with the goal of making it to the World Series.
The bad part is that to play tournament, you must play in majority of the regular season Little League games in your town league. Think about the older age groups - high school kids - and the mix of kids who just want some fresh air and to socialize in with kids playing travel and active in the college recruiting process. A few years ago, one kid ended up with serious facial fractures and she was rushed into emergency surgery. She is fine now (and in fact, attending an Ivy - very bright kid), but the point is, this is not a good experiment.
While I hear words like "toxic" for gifted kids in bad environments, typically mixing in with NT kids does not result in physical harm. Mixing gifted athletes and low ability athletes has some bad results.
I don't agree with mixing in low ability students with AP ability students, and we really don't see that happening where we live. There are plenty of very bright kids, and there are three other levels of classes (honors, college prep, academic) to serve the other kids. It will be interesting to see the average AP score at our HS this year, as they instituted a new policy of "take an AP course, must take the AP test". I think the percentage of kids taking an AP test boosts your HS ranking in US News and World Report. In the past, about half of the kids took an AP exam, and the average score was 4+. We'll see what happens.
