Popularity of High School Sports: Participation And Number of Schools Offering Various Sports Programs

The National Federation of High Schools provides survey results of the number of participants and the number of schools offering various varsity sports programs to their students. If you visit the link above you can see data for each state as well as the entire country when it comes to everything from basketball and football, to field hockey and skiing.

Just a word about the student participation counts - understand that these numbers account for the participants in VARSITY sports only. Underclassmen participating junior varsity programs, etc., are not counted here. In addition, students may be counted more than once in they participate in more than one sport.

That being said, here are the ten most population boys and girls sports, as well as participation numbers by state.