Here are the top five competitive sports for kids ages 6-12:
5. Football, if you combine tackle and flag.
(Biking is still the kids’ favorite activity.)
The big surprise on the list is tennis. There was a 29% increase in the number of children who played tennis regularly between 2019 and 2021.
It makes sense that kids would want to play tennis during the coronavirus pandemic. The sport is great training and you don’t get close to your opponent during a game.
Another racket game that has grown like crazy is pickleball. The funny-named sport is popular with grandparents, but kids love to play too. Pickleball has seen incredible growth of 83% from 2019 to 2021, attracting almost half a million regular players among people aged 6 to 17.
One of the reasons for pickleball’s popularity among young people is that a big star in professional pickleball is a teenager: 15-year-old Anna Leigh Waters.
One sport that has lost popularity is tackling football. Rough sport participation among children aged 6 to 12 has decreased by 29% between 2016 and 2021. Clearly, parents are concerned that children will injure their bodies, including their brains.
This does not mean that children do not play football. Participation in flag football – a softer game in which players “attack” other players by taking a flag from their belt – has increased by 15% over the same period. Now more kids are playing flag football than tackle football.
The report revealed other trends over the past few years. Some are good and some not too good.
A good trend is that more and more parents and their children are staying close to home to play sports. More than half of kids (58%) played their main sport through a community program this fall (compared to 38% last fall). This is great because community teams are cheaper than travel teams and allow more kids to play.
Unfortunately, some kids seem to have lost interest in playing sports during the pandemic. Participation in team sports is down. Only 37% of children aged 6 to 12 played sports regularly in 2021. This is well down from 2008, when 45% of children played sports.
But even worse, 27% of parents say their children’s lack of interest in sports is what keeps them from playing.
Hopefully that will change in 2023, and more kids will be on the pitch and less on the couch.
