My two cents and to put it simply, it ain’t fun. Studies show many kids abandon sports in general before High School. To much specialization, an all year round sport, no breaks, an ADD world with to many other options in their face, over bearing parents who have a different goal the child has not bought into, you gotta swim High School then also participate in Club Polo for tournaments and JO qualifiers, and oh yeah, keep on top of those studies in between Swim and Club practice. Do you have to do all this? No, yet pressure from many sources can burn one out. If you are borderline or below in ability, then why push thru? Social media says hey, come join me. When it turns into a job, it ain’t fun.
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As I see it, the single biggest issue is the rise of girl’s flag football. On the boy’s side, CIF participation in water polo this past season was higher than it was in the 2017-18 or 2018-19 season. There was a high point in the 2019-20 season that is being used as an end point which makes water polo appear to be losing athletes
The same cannot be said of the girl’s side. COVID happened and the boys bounced back while the girls did not. When the participation numbers are viewed in aggregate, they are down, but they are down because the loss in girls swamps the modest rise in boys.
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Do you honestly believe that people who don’t follow water polo are even aware of this website, let alone checking the ‘signings’ thread?
“the fact CIF-SS has the HS Football on National TV to promote that sport and HS Athletics is awesome. What is stopping @USAPolo , CIF-SS and other organizing bodies to attempt to get our sport a game of the week at the HS Level?”
Do you think CIF puts the HS Football Game of the Week on TV to promote the sport to get more kids involved? Or are they making some advertising money by putting something on TV they know many people would watch. What do you think the viewership (and subsequently, the advertising dollars) would be for a HS Water Polo Game on TV compared to a HS Football game?
What type of promotion is going on with HS Track & Field or Girls HS Tennis…both of those sports seem to be showing solid increase in participation numbers…yet neither has ever been on TV. How is that happening?
Marco - Your chart is interesting and insightful, but where are you getting those numbers from? Your numbers are different than those in the latest CIF report (the link at the top of this thread), particularly vis-a-vis earlier years. The CIF numbers tell a story that’s a bit starker than the numbers you’re using.
The numbers used were from pulled from the annual reports on this page:
I downloaded the lot, normalized section names and public/private designations, then used it as a data source in PowerBI. Then biggest difference between the report at the top of this thread and what I showed is the choice of range dates. They chose the 2019-20 school year, which paints a rough picture for water polo. I went back a couple more seasons to include the 2017-18 and 2018-19 years to add context.
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I’m fairly confident you have a problem with your data – though maybe it’s PowerBI’s fault. Your numbers (both boys and girls) from the last three years are correct, but your numbers for the years before that are wildly different from those in your data source.
For example, for 2022-23, you’re spot on for both boys and girls – your numbers (14.6K for boys and 12.8K for girls) correspond exactly to “2023” in the CIF spreadsheet. Ditto for the two more recent years. But for the prior year (2022, or “2021-22” on your chart, the numbers in your graph are nowhere in CIF’s table.
For example, your chart says 13.8K for boys and 12.6K for girls in 2021-22, but those numbers are nowhere (literally, nowhere) in CIF’s table; CIF says it’s 15.4K for boys (not 13.8K) and 14.1 for girls (not 12.6). Ditto for the year before that: your chart says 15.1 for boys and 14.8 for girls, but those numbers are nowhere – again, nowhere – in the CIF chart.
As I said, maybe the problem is with the software you’re using; my only guess is that since CIF (and your chart) skips a COVID year (“2020-21”), maybe the AI can’t handle that. Or maybe there was a data entry problem. But I’m very confident that the chart you made doesn’t accurately show the numbers from what you say is your data set. That data set shows a very different graph, and a pretty constant decline. Check again, and maybe fix the chart (or figure out if you somehow used two different data sets – the CIF’s for the last three years, but a different one for the prior years).
Trying to help, honestly.
The numbers for 2021-22 are in cells DP1431 and DQ1431 in the 2021-22 participation census submission data.
No AI was used, and I didn’t do data entry on any of the numbers.
As for the year before, those numbers would be in cells DA1470 and DC1470 from that season’s participation census submission data.
Could the answer of declining participation be as simple as rising obesity rates in children and how water polo suits are very revealing. People are self-conscious of their bodies and the photo-centric teenage culture brings a hyper-focus to any insecurities that are already present.
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I’ve found that at our previous team, quite a few children left specifically because of the way the coaches treated them at the 12u and 14u level. It was also part of why we left that team.
There has to be a point where you can tell a child that there are appropriate ways to manage your feelings and emotions, and cursing out 10 year olds (young people who you’re responsible for) and refs (authority figures) is not normal or okay… and the preference is to have a young child play on a team where you can expect adults to at least behave appropriately.
There’s the issue. You used the multiple different Excel spreadsheets, and combined them, whereas I just used the one combined CIF spreadsheet (the numbers) in the latest CIF press release. The CIF numbers are the same for the last three years but different for the earlier years. Not sure which numbers are more accurate, though the “historical” spreadsheets you used have various blanks and N/As, whereas the latest press release spreadsheet has none of that, so maybe these were preliminary spreadsheets. (Not your fault at all; it’s inconsistent CIF data.)
FWIW, here’s what the chart looks like if you use the combined press release data. Which tends to (1) be a smoother chart, so perhaps more likely to be accurate, and (2) paints a different picture – of a fairly consistent decline:
Others have suggested various reasons for the decline, including coaching techniques, so I thought it’d be helpful to see whether the decline in water polo was consistent with the trend in the other main water sport; i.e., swim and dive. The numbers – again, this is from the latest CIF press release spreadsheet – show a nearly identical trend in both WP and S/D. So maybe its something about water sports generally, not just water polo.
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Coaches haven’t changed nearly as much as the kids and their parents. Don’t think water polo coaches are some sort of outlier.
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Interesting idea re swimsuits. But - big growth in wrestling, beach volleyball, cheer, and of course flag. All skimpy outfits.
I suspect it’s more the level of commitment needed. The growth areas are club-optional sports. The declining areas require year round dedication.
Basically the crazy polo families (like most of us in this board) drive out the recreational participant.
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I used the source data from CIF. My chart matches the CIF source data. The table in the press release from CIF does not match the CIF source data. THAT is the issue.
Whoever put the CIF press release together did not use data in their included table that matched the data collected in the CIF participation census submissions. Either the table in the CIF press release is wrong, or the data presented in the CIF participation census submissions is wrong. If I had to place a bet, my money would be on the CIF press release table being the one that was botched. The participation census submissions lets you trace back every person to the school reporting participation.
For my chart, I did not use the totals I pointed out in the participation census documents beyond validation. I used the individual rows to maintain the ability to drill into the data. Is the decline in girls universal throughout California, or does public versus private show a difference?
Here is the data for the private schools in the CIF Southern Section:
Here is the water polo participation data for all schools in the CIF San Diego Section:
The numbers from the CIF Central Coast look different from the Southern and San Diego Sections:
If you are determined to believe a table in a press release is more reliable than the participation data the statistics in the table were supposed to be pulled from, I know I won’t convince you otherwise. I think the table in the press release is wrong. It think some intern either messed the job up, or wanted to be someplace else and didn’t think anyone would catch their making up numbers for four and five years ago in water polo participation.
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Do you have a corrected version of the press release table?
The totals for the press release totals don’t add up correctly.
@MarcoPolo has done more work researching this then probably CIF has done
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I saw this too when I was putting the spreadsheet together. The totals in the press release do not include the numbers listed as “Other” on the sheet. That is why the totals don’t match.
Thank you @Sctrojanje , but I also want to credit @Sand as he is the one who noticed the discrepancy. I did fire off an email to the CIF contact listed on the press release detailing the issue. If she responds, I’ll let the board know what she said.
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No question Flag football has had an impact on reducing girls participation especially in Northern California where the hs seasons are the same.
I think you have something here. In small schools “under 1000 kids” the introduction of a couple solid club players can result in instant results but possibly long term failure or a need for a reset. Say one of the top club players in SoCal lives in a small town, helps his small local school become a solid team, not on his own but with the support of a few other solid players. Before the new system you could win CIF, however incoming freshmen with no skills start to get discouraged as the measuring stick just got larger. Small schools with no talent will have a good group all with similar skill levels and have fun as a team. Once the level of play increases at that school it may inspire some to put in the time but it will also turn off many kids who just want to be kids. Transfer rules, school district restrictions all add to the drama.
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I’m shocked, but I got an answer back from CIF on the discrepancy between the press release and the participation surveys. The answer is that for the press release, they made the numbers up.
They justified making the numbers up for everything over 3 years old by saying the CIF enacted bylaws mandating responses to the surveys in the past 3 years. Only for the past 3 years are the numbers pulled from the participation surveys. For older dates, they inflated the numbers from what was in the participation surveys.
From CIF:
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