The Aspen Institute just released an excellent report on participation numbers/trends in youth sports, with narrative on how certain sports have grown their athlete base. It was a great read:
Unfortunately, it didn’t include data on water polo. Does anyone happen to know what our figures would be?
The report popped into my feed because of the swimming numbers, which are bleak. Among kids aged 6-12 and over the past 6 years, “core” participation in swim teams dropped 23.1%. For 13-17 year-olds, the corresponding figure dropped by about 40%.
I copied and pasted the major topics in the article below in case people don’t want to read the full report, but I’d strongly recommend perusing the entire thing.
NINE NOTABLE DEVELOPMENTS FROM SFIA’S 2025 DATA:
- Tennis and golf surge with help of new formats
- Flag football keeps growing
- Soccer and baseball face retention challenges
- SFIA data suggests continued progress against 63X30 goal
- Low-income kids are being left behind as costs rise
- Girls play more often, and boys’ participation starts to recover
- Asian youth participation rates skyrocket — unlike Black youth
- Fewer adults are coaching
- Training for coaches has decreased
(63x30 is the goal of 63% of youth participation by 2030)