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The image to your right shows the track at Stanford University, in Palo Alto, California. In less than three weeks, it will be full of high school track athletes running one of the early season Track Carnivals in Northern California.
If Northern California is like other areas of the U.S., then the numbers of participants will be up at the Stanford Invitational this coming month.
The NFHS, the governing body of high school sports, notes that the numbers in track & field and cross country add up to just over 1.4 million, making it the largest sport for boys and girls in all of high school sports. That is not the big deal. The big deal is how little money that these programs get on with each and every year. High school track & cross country kids are some of the best students in high schools, and the running helps with the normal crisis of the American teenager.
If footwear companies were serious about helping high schoolers, they would consider a grant or sponsorship of their state high school track & cross country association. Supporting a state coaching association could help a state develop their own Coaching clinic.
I am attending the 22nd Wisconsin Track Coaches Association Clinics, and they are tremendous! Larry Rawson, John Godina, Jeff Hartwig and Gwen Wentlund McKenzie are among the speakers. With over 1,100 coaches here, it is like old home week and the coaches are relaxing and also getting ready for out door season, which starts March 7 here. With all of the snow we have had, two days of track clinics gets this crowd ready for Wisconsin high school track & field!
Good news for the athletic industry: sports
participation is up at the high school level. According to the National
Federation for State High School Associations (NFHS) 2009-2010 High School
Athletics Participation Summary, the number of students participating in sports
continues to grow. In the academic year 2009-2010, a total of 7,628,377 students (4,455,740 boys and 3,172,637 girls)
participated in high school sports. The 2008-2009 figures showed
7,536,753 total students (4,422,662 boys and 3,114,091 girls).
The top 10 most popular sports for boys (in
terms of numbers of athletes participating) are football, outdoor track
and field (at number two),
basketball, baseball, soccer, wrestling, cross-country (at number seven), tennis, golf and swimming/diving. For
girls, the top 10 are outdoor track and field, (at number one), basketball, volleyball, softball
(fast-pitch), soccer, cross-country (at number six), tennis, swimming/diving, competitive spirit squads
and golf.
While participation numbers were up over
last year, the positions of track and field in the top 10 remained unchanged.
Interesting to note: Indoor track and field
also made gains, going from a total of 127,324 students in 2008-2009, to 127,860
in 2009-2010.
NFHS also recognizes and reports on data
collected on adapted sports (basketball, bowling, floor hockey, softball,
soccer and track); these numbers reported gains in every discipline except
floor hockey, where participation fell slightly.
The survey breaks data down by states (and by
sports within states), and also shows year by year changes in total
participation numbers. The pdf of the NFHS report can be downloaded free of
charge from www.nfhs.org (choose “participation data” from the menu on
the left-hand side of the home page).
Source: www.nfhs.org.
