Participation in high school sports sets new record again

INDIANAPOLIS – More than half of the nation’s high school students participated in sports last year, and for the first time, more than 3 million of them were girls.\nThe National Federation of State High School Associations released the results of its annual participation survey on Wednesday, listing a record 7,342,910 high school athletes in the 2006-07 school year among its member associations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It’s the 18th straight year the number of participants has increased.\n“This is certainly another great report,” NFHS executive director Robert F. Kanaby said. “The girls participation figure is particularly exciting since this year is the 35th anniversary of Title IX.”\nIn 1971, the year before the Title IX legislation mandating gender equity in sports, the NFHS reported almost 3.7 million boys but just over 290,000 girls competing in high school athletics. The number of girls rose to 817,000 in 1972-73 and, with few exceptions, has continued climbing each year since.\nThe 2006-07 survey showed a record 3,021,807 girls. The 4,321,103 boys who participated were second only to the record 4,367,442 in 1977-78. The record total of 7,342,910 last year was 54.2 percent of all students enrolled in the NFHS-member schools and an increase of 183,006 from 2005-06, the biggest one-year jump since 1995-96.\nKanaby said the big increase “makes a strong statement that students want these programs.”\nSoccer and volleyball accounted for the biggest increases in girls participants, with an additional 16,077 and 15,798, respectively, from the previous year. The most popular sport for girls remained basketball, with 456,967 participants, followed by outdoor track and field, volleyball, softball and soccer.\nFor boys, football again topped the list with more than 1.1 million participants and showed the biggest increase from the previous year with another 32,773 competing.\nBasketball was second for boys with 556,269 participants, followed by outdoor track and field, baseball and soccer.\n“Sometimes there’s a real big spike in some new sport,” NFHS spokesman Bruce Howard said. “This year, we kind of saw a general increase in a lot of the bigger-participant sports.\n“Of course, there’s more students in schools. That’s the key thing, the ability for schools to continue to fund these programs,” Howard said.\nTennis, swimming and diving, archery, badminton, cheerleading, crew and gymnastics were among sports in which girls outnumbered boys.\nTexas remained the leader among the states with 763,967 boys and girls participants, followed by California (735,497), New York (350,349), Illinois (334,358), Michigan (321,400), Ohio (315,473), Pennsylvania (276,911), New Jersey (247,332), Florida (230,312) and Minnesota (220,241).\nThe Indianapolis-based NFHS represents more than 18,500 high schools and 11 million participants.