Today
Volleyball is one of the most popular girls' sports, and strong high school and club programs are found throughout the country. According to a 2009 survey by the National Federation of State High School Associations, volleyball is the third highest sport for female participation at the high school level behind basketball and outdoor track and field. One of the biggest events in high school-age sports is the annual Volleyball Festival in Reno, Nevada, (formerly in Sacramento, California), which draws as many as 10,000 players and three thousand coaches for its five-day tournament.
Boys' volleyball is popular on a regional basis, and by far the greatest number of boys' teams are in Southern California. However, on the national stage, boys' volleyball remains far less popular than the girls' game at the high school level, as borne out by the following statistics from the aforementioned NFHS survey:
- For every boy currently competing in high school volleyball, more than eight girls are involved.
- While all states as well as the District of Columbia sanction girls' volleyball, a substantial majority of states do not sanction the boys' game. Only 22 states reported any participation in boys' volleyball, indicating that the sport is not sanctioned in other jurisdictions. Thirteen states reported participation of over 10,000 girls in high school volleyball. Six of these states have no boys' high school volleyball—Texas (a close #2 to California in girls' participation), Michigan (#4), Iowa (#6), Wisconsin (#7), Minnesota (#9), and Indiana (#12).
- Even those states that do sanction volleyball for both sexes typically have considerably fewer schools sponsoring the boys' game and thus fewer participants. Of the remaining seven high-participation girls' volleyball states, none had even half as many boys competing as girls. Even California, with nearly 39,000 girls' players, had fewer than 16,000 boys' players (which still constituted nearly a third of all boys' players in the country).
In the four years from 2004 to 2008, high school participation in boys' volleyball rose by more than 15%, from about 42,000 to nearly 50,000.
Read more about this topic: Volleyball In The United States
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