Expanding Opportunities for Students in High School Sports, Activities
Expanding opportunities in high school sports has been the storyline of two major announcements from the NFHS this week – an incredible week that has demonstrated the value of education-based activity programs in our nation’s schools.
On Monday came the news that the NFHS will be writing playing rules for flag football – the nation’s fastest-growing emerging sport. At the request of our member state associations and with the support of the NFHS Board of Directors, the first national rules for the sport will be in place for the 2025-26 season.
Already more than 30 states have either sanctioned flag football for girls or are involved in pilot programs, and about 43,000 girls nationwide are playing the sport. With the national rules structure in place, those numbers are certain to explode over the next few years.
Yesterday, at a press conference in Indianapolis, we reported that there were more than eight million participants in high school sports in the 2023-24 school year. Talk about comebacks!
Since the first survey after the pandemic, participation in high school sports has increased 444,248 in just two years. We are really pleased to report that for the first time we had more than eight million participants in high school sports. This tells us that our schools are doing a great job trying to engage as many kids as possible in our programs.
Perhaps the greatest enjoyment of these two major announcements is that we were able to share the stage yesterday with local, state and national leaders of high school sports in Indianapolis – all of whom shared the impact of high school activity programs for our nation’s students.
Paul Neidig, commissioner of the Indiana High School Athletic Association (IHSAA), discussed the IHSAA’s pilot program for girls flag football, and Heather McGowan, athletic director at Ben Davis High School in Indianapolis, talked about the rapid growth in the sport at her school.
“We have 27 schools across our membership that are participating in girls flag football this year,” Neidig said. “This year is going to be an inaugural season. Next year, we hope it will become an emerging sport in Indiana, and with our experience it will rapidly grow from there.
“When I think about why we need to start flag football it is more about lessons in all of education-based athletics. These lessons are profound in the development of each student-athlete, but then they become transferable for every student-athlete for the rest of their lives. We are pleased to be able to offer another opportunity. That’s what this is – another opportunity to grow and learn as a student-athlete.”
McGowan offered similar sentiments regarding the local program at Ben Davis High School.
“We had eight teams across the state two years ago; now we are up to 27 teams so it’s really growing rapidly,” McGowan said. “The benefits of our program are more opportunities for our student-athletes to learn and grow and to experience competition. In addition, the girls learn how to network, how to deal with adversity, how to persevere and to learn what grit actually is, as well as time management.”
Another positive aspect of adding flag football is that from data captured from the states that have sanctioned the sport for girls, about half of the girls playing the sport were not engaged previously in another high school sport. So, this is a sport for girls for which they did not have to have a club background in order to play.
“The majority of our girls flag football team are girls who have never played a sport before,” McGowan said. “We do have a few crossovers, but the coaches of those sports have been phenomenally supportive and come out and watch them play. The same goes for boys volleyball and girls wrestling – most of these student-athletes haven’t been a part of another team sport.
“It’s amazing to see the pride and confidence that is built in these kids who have never stepped on a field or court before. For them to have this opportunity this late in the game is tremendous.”
Another panelist at yesterday’s press conference was Phil Rison, executive director of the National Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association (NIAAA). In response to the increasing numbers in the NFHS Athletics Participation Survey release, he had the following to offer:
“The most important thing we do is community – we cannot lose community,” Rison said. “Community is on Friday night. It is on Tuesday night. It is throughout the week when students go to participate in interscholastic athletics, and our community comes out and engages with and watches these students compete. Education-based athletics is vital to our communities and to our future. So, these numbers are important.”
The news of the past two days has been exciting and encouraging, but, as Phil Rison stated yesterday, we know there are still more students in our schools awaiting an opportunity to be a part of team.
“There are students who aren’t engaged, and the way we get them engaged is we invite them,” Rison said. “My son-in-law is an athletic director, (with) back-to-back state champions in Esports. And if you look at the photo of the Esports team vs. the photo of their basketball team when they are both winning, the smiles are the same. So, the impact and the influence is what happens with any new sport or activity we can offer.”
Related Stories
