To assist readers who have specific interests, the WSF has created a series of research briefs from Go Out & Play: Youth Sports in America.

Go Out and Play: Youth Sports in America is a comprehensive research report that covers a range of topics including gender equity. Today more girls participate in sports than ever before in U.S. history. And yet, equitable access and opportunity in sports remains a goal rather than a reality. Go Out and Play reports parents’ views on the extent of gender equity in youth sports.

To assist readers who have specific interests, the WSF has created a series of research briefs from Go Out & Play: Youth Sports in America.

Go Out and Play: Youth Sports in America is a comprehensive research report that covers a range of topics including age of entry into sports and drop-out rates. The findings document the existence of a narrower window of opportunity for girls in sport. Girls enter sports at a later age than boys and drop out sooner and in greater numbers. The student survey results show the main reasons girls and boys drop out of sports.

To assist readers who have specific interests, the WSF has created a series of research briefs from Go Out & Play: Youth Sports in America.

Go Out and Play: Youth Sports in America is a comprehensive research report that covers a range of topics including how athletic participation impacts children’s health. The report explored a variety of ways that sports involvement intersects with the overall development of girls and boys. Here “health and well-being” are broadly defined to include physical health, emotional health and successful social adaptation in school. The results show that for many U.S. children, athletic participation contributes to general health and body esteem, healthy weight, social relationships, higher quality of life, and educational achievement.

This study measures the nationwide participation rates of girls and boys in exercise and organized team sports. The central focus is on how the intersections among families, schools and communities are related to children’s involvement and interest in athletics and physical activity. Some of the personal and social benefits associated with children’s athletic participation are also identified and discussed. The athletic interests and involvements of girls and boys are examined from childhood through late adolescence, including entry into sport as well as drop-out patterns.

Read the Executive Summary here.

To assist readers who have specific interests, the WSF has created a series of Research Briefs from Go Out and Play on the following topics:

Go Out and Play – Athletic Participation and Children’s Well-Being
Go Out and Play – Entry Into Sports, Dropping Out of Sports
Go Out and Play – Gender Equity in Sports
Go Out and Play – Interest in Sports and Physical Activity
Go Out and Play – Participation in Sports and Exercise Activities
Go Out and Play – Participation in Team or Organized Sport
Go Out and Play – Physical Education
Go Out and Play – Sports, Exercise and Family Life
Go Out and Play – Understudied Populations
Go Out and Play – Conclusion and Policy Recommendations
Go Out and Play – Youth Sports in America – Full Report One Pager

She could feel the ground beneath her shaking. A loud eruption pierces the air as all of the fans in the crowd simultaneously stop stomping and jump to their feet in jubilation. She smiles, celebrating along with the crowd. The kicker trots out onto the field, surveys the distance and lines up. The ball travels through the air slowly, almost deciding its fate, but flies through the goal posts. The referees blow their whistles, signaling the end of the game and another victory. The bench clears and the football players gather around the kicker to start the celebration. The kicker’s helmet falls to the ground and her ponytail swings free.

Those were the memories of a happy mother watching her daughter play a sport she loved. Watching as young boys celebrated her daughter’s prowess as a kicker, not caring that she is a girl. However, those fun memories were short-lived.

In middle school, Kacy loved to play soccer and participated on the school’s football team. She and the boys played so well together they made it all the way to the state tournament. All the coaches in the county knew about Kacy and what she could do on the field, so it was only normal for them to be excited about the possibility of her continuing her dominance in high school. Sadly, neither she nor her mother could foresee the roadblocks to her future as a competitive football player.

Like many other parents, Kacy’s mother wanted her daughter to expand her educational experience; therefore she felt it necessary to move her daughter to a different school. She decided smaller class sizes and a curriculum that includes religion would be the best fit. Kacy started her high school career in a new town, new county and a new high school. However, the school was too small to have a football team, so Kacy tried out for another team.

She made the team and practiced with the team for two months and participated in a scrimmage. She loved it. The coaches on the team and in the league supported her playing on the team. However, during the team photo shoot, Kacy was told by her mother that the head of the league told her coach she could no longer play with the boys “because she is a girl.”

Kacy and her mother were stunned. They were unable to understand why her daughter’s gender hindered her from playing football, especially since it was never a problem before with the athletes, coaches or parents.

Astounded by the information, Kacy’s mother contacted the Women’s Sports Foundation for help. The Advocacy Department explained that several federal and state laws prohibit sex discrimination in athletics, the very type of sex discrimination that Kacy encountered. We provided Kacy’s mother with several referrals to civil rights attorneys who could help her better understand Kacy’s rights and challenge her exclusion from the league.

Kacy’s situation is just one of many examples of female athletes being excluding from competition just because of their sex. The Foundation is poised to help athletes like Kacy challenge this unjust discrimination and get their opportunity to play.

Update! The Women’s Sports Foundation was informed that Kacy was reinstated to her football team. After months of waiting and hard work, all the efforts paid off for Kacy, her family and her teammates. Kacy has rejoined her team and is kicking field goals and extra points for the New Creation Center Crusaders. Read an in-depth article about the success from the Atlanta Journal Constitution.

This research is the most accurate description of college sports’ participation patterns to date, shows that both men’s and women’s sports participation have increased over the past 25 years. It examines factors, including Title IX and athletic expenditure growth, impacting today’s college sports participation trends, which vary widely by sport. Changes in high school sports participation, rising health care costs, increased numbers of international students, and college recruitment are explored, as well as the implication of these participation trends on college sports’ diversity.

Read the Executive Summary here or the full report below.

This study provides the most accurate and comprehensive examination of participation trends to date. We analyze data from almost every higher education institution in the country and utilize data and methods that are free of the shortcomings present in previous research on this subject. A 10-year NCAA sample containing 738 NCAA colleges and universities is examined over the 1995-96 to 2004-05 period. In addition, a complete four-year sample containing 1,895 higher education institutions is examined over the 2001-02 to 2004-05 period.

Supplemental Information

Executive Summary

Report Card

Trends in Participtation: All Institutions

Trends in Participtation: Division

Trends in Participtation: State

Are women of color receiving their fair share of the opportunities in intercollegiate athletics? Some writers have suggested that female athletes of color have not accrued as many gains during the Title IX era of American sport as white female athletes. Other writers suggest that Title IX has hurt male athletes of color. Overall, Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, the federal law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of sex in all education programs and activities receiving federal funds, has helped to spur girls’ and women’s participation in sport. Yet the assessment of progress in intercollegiate sport by women of color and men of color is confounded not only by the complexity of race relations in American history, but also by the scarcity of reliable data on minority athletic participation rates during the Title IX era (from 1970 to the present).

Are women receiving a fair share of the opportunities in intercollegiate athletics? The 25 year-old debate and discussion on this question has been heavy with controversy and light on facts. Indeed, the facts were unavailable to the public until the publication of the NCAA’s first Gender Equity Report in 1992. A limitation of this report, however, was that it presented aggregate data, which did not allow the public to view the performance of individual institutions. This lack of information made levelheaded discussion and analysis of gender equity difficult, and it also stymied efforts to hold individual schools accountable to the law. With the passage of The Equity in Athletics Disclosure Act of 1994 (EADA), schools became obliged to divulge participation rates between women and men, coaching salaries and expenses, student aid and operating expenses. On an annual basis, beginning in October of 1996, these data became available by name of individual institution.