High School Water Polo Participation Trend (from NFHS Survey)

High School - Boys
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High School Water Polo Participation Trend (from NFHS Survey)
Season # of Boys Schools # of Boys Players # of Girls Schools # of Girls Players Combined # of Players
2013-2014 795 21,451 784 18,899 40,350
2014-2015 807 21,626 805 19,204 40,830
2015-2016 826 21,857 827 20,230 42,087
2016-2017 822 21,286 831 20,826 42,112
2017-2018 838 22,051 844 21,954 44,005
2018-2019 862 22,475 881 21,735 44,210
2019-2020 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
2020-2021 n/a n/a n/a n/a n/a
2021-2022 850 19,164 882 18,215 37,379
2022-2023 964 21,289 980 18,728 40,017
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With TX and PA now playing high school polo I’m surprised these numbers aren’t higher. Also, 795 schools to 964 with no uptick in number of players. Are the team sizes smaller? Seems odd to me.

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Agree, interesting and does not make much sense that there has not been much growth. The numbers are from NFHS, which might not include all participating high schools or states. The growth stat from USA Water Polo (2013-2023): “USA Water Polo membership now totals nearly 50,000, doubling participation in the last ten years”

A more relevant stat is the number of competitive water polo players (clubs) at the high school level. The total players (boys) in JOs (18U+16U) from sessions 1 & 3 is about 3,640 players, or about 17.5% of total boys playing at high school level. I am bringing this number up as some of the stat released recently about the % of HS kids that continue playing WP in college (D1 through D3) is low compared to other sports of about 5% is distorted as it uses the 21,000 as the denominator and not the 3640. Using the more appropriate denominator brings the % to about 25% or 1:4. This is high as the pool is larger due to foreign players. Assuming foreign players about for 33% of total players, likely too high => 17% or 1: 6. Not bad.

This is the link to the NCAA probability of HS athlete to play college by sport: Link

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Great analysis. It surprises me that only 17% of HS players played JO’s. My guess is the CA participation is closer to 50% and the rest of the country is 10%

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Coming from a small school in California, 4 of our 23 athletes competed at JO’s one of them a graduating senior, on the flip side, some schools like Oaks, or HW are much higher if not 100%. However if the graduating senior is not playing in college most of them will not play club after high school season. I would put the average in CA at about 20-25%. From last years divisional placements I would say 60 percent from teams in D2 and above. and 10 or less for D3 and below.

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Here’s the source data

2023-2024 data will be interesting when released (should see even more of the impact of TX high school numbers).

Re: Girls High School participation, I have heard the widespread launch of Flag Football has taken away potential players…

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They only survey 7 states (see p. 54) and list of those states on p. 64. It is only a partial survey for this specific sport. It is potentially irrelevant to compare over time when they keep changing the states they include in the survey.

Luckily we have Wikipedia (see the historical table). They do change the number of states they survey.

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Yep. Missing Oregon, Washington, Virginia, Ohio, RI and Maine any others?

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The survey data only accounts for states that have a high school state championship. The Northeast has many teams that would not be accounted for in this survey, as the states themselves do not have state championships. But most of the Northeast boarding schools have teams, as well as a few individual public and private high schools (Greenwich, Brunswick, etc.).

Also, I know that Pennsylvania has almost 100 high school varsity programs on the Men’s and Women’s side. But there is only one club that sends multiple teams to JOs, plus one or two high schools that send their upcoming high school team to JOs inconsistently. It is definitely an untapped market when it comes to high school participation converting to year round water polo. Pennsylvania HS water polo is not new. Their leagues have been around for 50+ years. But the culture of water polo is around high school and not club play.

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