Well, sports are optional and presumably they chose to do them, so if they don't have free time on those days, that's their decision. If it's too much for them, they can cut back - nothing wrong with that. Everyone needs some down time to unwind.

Between homework, marching band, and pep band, my daughter doesn't have a lot of free time, either, until basketball season is over. During football and marching band competition season she has practice 3-4 nights a week until 7 and football games on Friday nights. Most Fridays, she doesn't even come home from school at all until after the game is over around 11pm. Then there are competitions most Saturdays, which are all-day events.

Pep band can be similar, some warm-up time before games instead of after school practices, but sometimes 2-3 ball games during the week. They usually end earlier than football games, though and she's home by 9pm on those nights. She has more free time than she does during marching band, but the schedule is less predictable, more scattered.

School gets out at 3, after school practices start at 4. I don't know how the sports teams do it, but the band kids are required to spend that hour between doing homework. If they don't have any homework, then they can either read, or practice their music independently.

They can't even leave at 3 and come back for band practice an hour later (without good reason). The school's thinking being that if you're going to do this extracurricular thing that takes a ton of time, we're going to make sure you're spending at least some of your evening getting homework done.