Emerging from the Darkness: High School Wrestling Participation 2022-2023
The NFHS recently released their high school sports participaton data for 2022-2023. Total wrestling participants was 305,593, a record in this millenia, representing 16% growth from the previous survey year. This growth far outpaces the year-year growth in total high school sports participation which was 3.1%.
Overall, boys wrestling rebounded to levels not seen since 2014-2015. While the number of boys teams has remained roughly constant, the number of participants increased by 11% to 256,466.
Girls wrestling continues to grow like a weed with 49,127 participants in 6,381 programs representing year-year growth of 55% and 33%, respectively. One in six high school wrestlers was a girl in 2022-2023. One cloud for girls wrestling is the anemic growth in average team size which was reported at 7.7 wrestlers per team. At historical growth rates, the average girls team won’t be capable of filling a minimum dual meet roster for another 20+ years.
Among high school sports participants, wrestling’s popularity has increased a bit. Wrestling’s share of all high school sports participants edged up slightly from 3.5% to 3.9%, with boys at 5.7% and girls at 1.5%.
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