Encouraging Student Participation by Offering New Programs

Annually, the NFHS collects and reports the participation results for the year that includes the most popular sports and the number of athletes that are involved. Most sports have continually shown an increase year to year with minor, rare exceptions. There are, however, some sports or teams in schools around the country that may occasionally struggle to field a full roster. What’s the secret to getting more students to participate in high school sports?

In simple terms, you want to meet the needs and interests of the students. Perhaps your program does not include sports that are interesting to them. Is there something you could add to your program? And if there is a decline in the number of participants, you may have to consider if there is a reasonable future for it. But before taking the drastic step of eliminating a sport, you should consider some of the following strategies.

• Determine if a new sport should be added to your program. This can be achieved by surveying your student body, or simply talking with students at lunch or between classes. It is entirely possible that a segment of your students may not have an interest in the sports that you currently offer and a new one might fill this need. Of course, in the exploration stage, you should consider the budget ramifications, whether your venues are suitable, the need for additional transportation, and the cost and availability of a coaching staff, among other things.

• Consider adding sports beyond your normal staple of offerings. Is it time to include badminton, bass fishing, girls wrestling, girls flag football, lacrosse or even esports? And a word about esports. While this possibility does not represent the normal competitive offering that involves physical effort, it may just be the thing to attract the non-typical participant, and it is very popular. It would meet the needs of a new, perhaps untapped segment of your students.

• Create a club sport initially for any new sport that you might be considering. In this manner, you can test the interest and try to ascertain if this new offering will have long-term staying power beyond the current core group of students that have expressed an interest.

• Hire a Pied Piper as the head coach of a sport with a diminishing turnout of candidates and is at risk of not being able to field a team. Without overlooking the requisite knowledge and skills necessary to coach, installing a positive, enthusiastic and energetic individual may be able to save a floundering team by attracting new and more candidates.

• Regularly stop by lunch periods and circulate with the intent of encouraging young people to try out for any sport that could use more athletes. It can be as simple as walking up to a freshman and opening with, “Hey, have you ever considering wrestling? You don’t have to have any experience.” As an alternative approach, go around the room or hallways with a freshman who is part of the team. “Do you know Bob? He’s a freshman and member of the team, and he can answer any questions you might have.” Personal invitations can produce results.

• Consider partnering with a neighboring school to co-offer a team that struggles annually to fill its roster. Again, you are not combining all sports in your program, but only a joint venture in a specific sport. By working cooperatively, both schools will be able to provide an opportunity for students that they couldn’t do individually and, thereby, you will meet the needs of these students.

• Contact the leaders of youth groups and organizations in your community, and work to create feeder programs for all sports, but especially for those that may be struggling to field a complete team on the secondary level. In order to maintain high school teams, youth-level programs are a critical element to fill the squads on the high school level with athletes who may have a basic understanding and interest in the sport.

• Host clinics for both middle school students and community youth coaches. By doing this, you may be able to generate more interest in a particular sport among students, and increase and improve the knowledge and technical skills of potential coaches. When conducting clinics for younger athletes, it can be especially helpful if you can use current varsity players and alumni to help with the clinics. In this manner, the young participants may be inspired, and a bond may be formed with the current participants.

Beyond encouraging participation by either adding new teams or trying to fill rosters to keep some teams afloat, you should try to meet the needs of your students in one additional manner. In some sports, there will be more students trying out than you can essentially carry on the team. You may actually have an imposed, established upper-limit for each team, and this would be due to transportation, uniforms and the number of paid, negotiated coaching positions.

This means that there may be some students who are not selected for the varsity or junior varsity squads, but they want to be part of your program. National studies have indicated that students want to be with their friends, to enjoy the experience of being on a team and learn new skills.

To use girls soccer as an example, you may be limited to 22 athletes on both the varsity and junior varsity squads. But if 60 or more try out for the sport, there will 14 or more who will be disappointed and without an opportunity to be part of a team. With these students, channel them to another team that has open spots on their roster. For example, your varsity or junior varsity field hockey teams may have some openings. Yes, those trying out for soccer wouldn’t have the requisite stick skills, but both sports involve running, the same number of players, basically the same size field and even some similar strategies.

Even if you have a good established cross country program, your coaches might also be able to take on a few athletes who were wannabe soccer players. Will all those young ladies who didn’t make the soccer teams decide to make the transition to another sport? No, but do try to channel them and give them an opportunity to participate, which is all they wanted in the first place. The goals should be to meet the needs of as many young people as possible.

With a little time, effort and creativity, you may be able to increase the number of participants in your athletic program either by filling out rosters, creating new teams or providing alternative opportunities for your student-athletes.