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The NCAA News - News and FeaturesFebruary 24, 1997 NCAA sports participation up in some ways, down in others Sports participation at NCAA member institutions is up. But then again, it's down.
Because of a change in the way the annual sports participation report has been compiled, it's difficult to make a comparison between the 1995-96 study and those from previous years. The raw numbers are up, but analysis suggests that the overall participation rate is down for men, up for women and down slightly overall.
Average number of participants per school
For the first time, the study included figures from provisional members. Including all of the sports studied for men and women, participation for provisional and active members in 1995-96 was 323,226, substantially higher than the active-membership figure of 299,608 from 1994-95. However, the increase is strictly the result of more schools being counted in the study.
The more revealing figures involve the number of participants per institution studied (see table, page 1).
Using the total number of participants in NCAA-sponsored sports (those in which championships are sponsored, plus Division I-A football) and dividing them by the number of active members for 1994-95 and the number of active and provisional members for 1995-96 shows that participation in the average NCAA program declined in 1995-96, dropping from about 325 participants per program to about 317. That decline is easily explained by the addition of the 96 provisional members, all but one of which are in Divisions II or III.
Division I, with only one provisional member, showed a per-school increase of about six participants, from about 420 per institution to about 426. The men's participation rate was almost static, declining less than one percent, but the rate of women's Division I participation climbed almost five percent.
For Division I women, the average squad size for every sport was up over the 1994-95 study, except for tennis, which was unchanged. In addition, women's rowing, which became an NCAA championship sport in the 1996-97 academic year, showed dramatic increases in sponsorship and participation, going from 27 sponsoring institutions with 1,112 Division I participants to 50 sponsors with 2,426 participants.
Football remained the sport with the most participants, with 53,900 student-athletes competing in all divisions. The most-sponsored sport is women's basketball, sponsored at 962 institutions.
Sponsorship figures are exact. Although participation figures also appear to be precise, they are adjusted to include institutions that did not submit a squad list for sports they are known to sponsor. In addition, no audit is performed on the squad lists that are submitted, so there is no assurance that every squad list submitted is completely correct. Still, the figures are accurate enough to provide a participation comparison from year to year, according to NCAA Director of Research Ursula R. Walsh.
Women's participation is up, although the use of provisional members and the addition of three women's emerging sports to the study complicate any comparisons from previous years.
Counting provisional and active members in the championship sports in all divisions, women constitute 37.6 percent of all participants. Counts also are made on several sports in which championships are not conducted, but those totals tend to distort comparisons because of the arbitrary cutoff point on which sports are included.
In Division I, women's soccer showed the greatest jump in participation, increasing by 691 student-athletes to 4,248. Other Division I sports increasing by more than 300 participants were women's rowing (622), football (522 -- 381 in Division I-A and 141 in Division I-AA), women's indoor track (460) and women's outdoor track (408).
The biggest numerical decline in Division I was in men's rowing, which dropped by 299 participants (seven fewer sponsoring institutions).
In terms of Division I sponsorship, women's rowing and women's soccer (181 sponsoring institutions) showed the biggest increases.
Men's rowing and wrestling (down six) had the biggest drops in Division I sponsorship. Despite the inclusion of provisional members, wrestling overall increased by only one sponsoring institution from 1994-95 to 1995-96, growing from 257 to 258. Among sports with more than 250 sponsors, only men's swimming showed a similarly small increase (up from 368 to 371, down by two in Division I).
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