Women's basketball is in an unprecedented era of growth.
It feels like a new viewership or attendance record is set on a regular basis. The women's college national championship game between South Carolina and Iowa drew a stunning average of 18.7 million viewers. ESPN's WNBA coverage has averaged 1.2 million viewers this regular season, a 170 percent leap from 2023. And this isn't just the Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese effect (though they're certainly important); the Connecticut Sun sold out their first game at TD Garden against the Los Angeles Sparks on Aug. 20.
So why are fewer and fewer high school girls playing?
Since the COVID-19 pandemic, which slashed participation across all sports, numbers have bounced back and even exceeded pre-pandemic levels. The National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS) touted in its recent 2023-24 participation survey that more than 8 million kids now play high school sports, including record highs for both boys and girls.
But the NFHS data claims that girls basketball is not part of the surge.
In 2018-19, the last year of NFHS surveys before the pandemic (you can find all of their past surveys online), more than 399,000 girls played on high school basketball teams, including approximately 19,300 in New England. Those totals are down nearly 8 percent nationwide and more than 12 percent locally, including sharper drops in places like Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Perhaps most notable is the continued decline even multiple years removed from the pandemic's start.
Contrast that table with the boys basketball participation numbers that have fluctuated, but are closer to leveling out.
Though some states have experienced more significant declines in boys participation (like Maine and Vermont), most of New England and the nation at large has steadied since the pandemic. Massachusetts added 283 boys to its pool between the 2022-23 and 2023-24 school years and has a net gain of 225 boys since 2021-22. Meanwhile, the state has a net loss of 547 girls in that same three-year span.
This isn't just a pandemic-related change. Over the last 20 years, the data tells completely different stories for girls and boys basketball participation, both nationally and locally.
(A note before we continue: It's clear from the above tables that there is inaccurate data collection involved when participation numbers are exactly the same year-over-year for both boys and girls — looking at you, Connecticut and Vermont. We'll be showing longer-term trends for Massachusetts next because that is the largest sample size of any New England state. Approximately 47 percent of New England high school girls basketball players are in Massachusetts.)
In Massachusetts, boys high school basketball participation has actually increased by 4.23 percent across 20 years, from 12,284 players in 2004-05 to 12,803 last year (a net increase of 519 boys). Meanwhile, girls participation has dropped 22.1 percent from 10,396 to 8,095 — a net loss of 2,301 girls.
At a macro level, the United States has seen its participation numbers decline by 1.6 percent in 20 years on the boys side and 19.6 percent on the girls side. In New England (remember, an imperfect estimate, but still a solid one), those rates are a 3.9 percent decline for boys and 26.9 percent decline for girls. According to the NFHS data, New England has approximately 6,200 fewer high school girls basketball players than it did 20 years ago.
Importantly, this decline has not corresponded with significantly fewer schools offering girls basketball. Per the data, there are 33 fewer New England high schools with an official girls basketball team compared to 20 years ago, which is a relatively small decrease. Massachusetts has 24 more schools offering girls basketball now, and the nationwide count is up 915 schools.
Instead, there are simply fewer players to fill out teams — a sentiment that has been echoed over and over in conversations with high school coaches. Fewer schools can offer freshman teams, or even some JV teams, because the numbers just don't exist.
One way to look at it: If we evenly distributed girls basketball players across every school in the country in 2004-05, each school would have 26.6 players, enough for a varsity, JV and potentially a freshman team. And that's just a rough average between schools of all different shapes and sizes. In 2023-24, that nationwide average is 20.3 players per school.
Zooming in on Massachusetts: the Bay State was filled in 2004-05 with 30.6 players per school. Now it's down to 22.2, prompting tough decisions about how many teams a program can field.
Lexington coach Steve Solly has seen the shift during his time at the school.
"It's been kind of steady for us in the sense that we don't have a freshman team consistently; now we're just JV and varsity," he said. "But what I'm noticing is within the Middlesex League now, there's more and more teams that only have two team programs, where we all, in the early 2000s when I was a freshman coach, every school in the Middlesex League had freshmen, JV and varsity. So I guess I do sense, at least regionally, that there's a decline."
So the big question: Why aren't high school girls playing?
There's no obvious answer. High school enrollment rates are still high, and as mentioned at the start of this story, more girls are playing high school sports than ever. Basketball was the most popular girls sport nationwide in 2004-05, but was down to third in 2018-19 and has been fourth the past three years, losing ground on track and field, volleyball and soccer.
This isn't the first time girls basketball participation decline has brought on widespread discussion. The Wall Street Journal and several other outlets highlighted the downturn in 2022. But that was the first year of data affected by the pandemic when athletic participation on the whole was down. Two years later, girls basketball continues to struggle.
Norwood coach Kristen McDonnell says the numbers in her programs are solid and hopes to field a freshman team this winter. But she's also noticing the decline regionally and nationally. McDonnell's theory: the skill level required in basketball today is so high that kids and families will back away if they're not seeing early success.
"I think a lot of kids — I would say more probably, parents and families — are assuming that there's such a specialization now, that if their child by age 12-13 isn't showing really a ton of progress, or is one of the best on their teams, then they're kind of like, alright, let's look at something else," she said,
Solly had two thoughts. He mentioned that community is important to building a basketball pipeline in a town, and since volunteer parents and coaches cycle so quickly, it's hard to establish consistent local development. He also mentioned that with so many sports becoming year-round commitments, athletes have to choose.
"We cannibalize each other, so to speak," Solly said. "So if a kid loves soccer or loves volleyball, there's winter soccer and volleyball options. So if they like that, if that's their No. 1 sport, you're seeing less kids say, 'Well, I'm going to play multi sports.' They're just going to do their top sport or two year-round."
Is something missing at the youth levels that is helping sports like volleyball and soccer? Is there a higher barrier to entry for high school basketball than there was 20 years ago? Is single-sport specialization to blame?
These are all questions worth asking, but there isn't an obvious answer.
One silver lining is this women's basketball boom we're currently watching. The stars of the WNBA and college game are making more lasting impressions on young girls. We'll have to wait and see if those inspirations launch a wave of high school interest in the future.
