Sports are a big part of the experience in high school for many students. In fact, during the 2018-2019 school year, more than 7.9 million students participated in high school sports across the country. Sports are still a very popular extracurricular activity for students in high schools across the United States. From the AAA State of Play, this infographic looks at the most popular sports in each state for both girls and boys and even ranks the top two high school sports for each gender.
This data all comes based on a survey from the National Federation of State High School Associations. It's not much of a surprise, but the most popular high school sport for boys is football, and the most popular sport for girls was track and field. With football, it was the most popular boys sport in 43 states, as more than one million students played during the 2018-2019 school year. During that same time, more than 488,000 girls did track and field.
