Several forces are driving the decline. More athletes are sticking to one sport nearly year-round. Schools have added other sports for girls, which have lured athletes away from basketball. Some girls see basketball as too difficult to play, or even not “girly” enough, coaches say.
Here is the original publication of this results – available to read for anyone. A link to a partial report of the actual survey is at the bottom of it. clayk has been saying girls' basketball participation has been dropping in favor of volleyball for years now.
Click to enlarge this graph that breaks down the Top 5 most popular girls' sports:
Last Edit: Sept 20, 2022 13:41:56 GMT -5 by Deleted
Lots of parents pushing their girls into sports that are perceived as being less gay. Nobody wants to say that, but it's the truth.
And by that same token into a sport that has fewer perceived Girls of Color in it, aka perceived as more predominantly White or more accurately, “White-friendly”… in addition to being perceived as more “str8-friendly.”
…In addition to a sport that’s perceived as being less contact-friendly or less physical, and therefore less likely to cause a long-term injury such as an ACL tear.
Amongst any other potential sticking points – cost of playing the sport, likelihood of awards being handed out for effort/participation, etc.
Last Edit: Sept 20, 2022 17:13:29 GMT -5 by Deleted
1) There is no contact in volleyball; 2) There is no need to run in practice (and basketball coaches love to do conditioning (running, running, running) in October that will have no bearing on conditioning in February, when the games matter most); 3) Volleyball uniforms are more stylish; 4) The youth volleyball culture is much less confrontational and much more group-oriented than basketball.
Girls make decisions about what sport to play in middle school. The elite athlete who could pick volleyball or basketball will often just do what her friends do -- thoughts of a professional career are far away, and scholarships are available in both -- and her less-athletic, less-driven friends will likely choose volleyball for the above reasons.
What's worse is USA Basketball has never tried to turn the ship around or, as far as I know, acknowledged that there's even a problem.
The fact that soccer wins out has little to do with the above, however. It's more that pretty much every youngster in our area plays soccer starting at a young age. Basketball is a more difficult game to learn, and fewer players are involved. But still, here's where USA Basketball needs to step in, analyze the situation and figure out why soccer is more popular.
Purely anecdotal: At the high school where I coach, the girls' basketball tradition is deep. Jayne Appel played there and there has been at least one Division I player on the roster for almost every year since 1997. And some have played well for elite programs (Hannah Huffman at Notre Dame). The team was very good last year and is coached by an elite club coach with tremendous college connections.
At the moment, we have about 25 girls involved in the program, with likely more showing up when tryouts start in October. Let's say we get 50.
Soccer, which is in the same season of sport in California, has 164 girls signed up.
In terms of soccer, it's the most distinguish sport for females. Though if a woman plays basketball year round, they could potentially make more money. But it appears the top Euro leagues (of soccer) are starting to pay their women a respectable salary. The NWSL salary is still lower than a WNBA salary. And soccer players can't really play year round unless they go to Brazil or Australia (which neither pay well).
As far as I can tell -- and I've been coaching at the high school level since 1978 -- girls choose their sport in middle school. As a high school coach, one of my primary jobs was to make connections with my feeder schools, find the athletes, and get them excited about basketball. It takes about five years to build a high school program because really, it's all about sixth grade. If you get the sixth grade girls to play basketball, then the chances of them playing in high school go way up.
And in sixth grade, thoughts of professional income, or even scholarships, are so far in the future that they don't even enter into the conversation. It's about friends and coaches who encourage you.
And here's another local example of the problems with the sport. Stanley Middle School, which has 1,200 students in three grades in Lafayette CA, an affluent suburb, has two boys' basketball teams for each level. Last year, there were no girls' basketball teams at the school. Part of the problem was finding coaches, but a bigger issue is that no parental pressure was applied to revive the girls' programs. This is the issue; this is the problem; and USA Basketball is, as far as I can tell, simply ignoring it.