In many ways, the spring season is the busiest in the high school sports calendar.
And while spring sports lacks in big crowds of football in the fall or basketball in the winter, spring sports makes up in sheer volume.
In terms of number of participants, fall season rules the school year. According to numbers collected by the National Federation of State High School Associations, fall sports in the state of Washington drew 65,226 participants in the 2013-14 school year.
But almost a third of that number was from football, by far the most popular sport by participation.
Spring isn’t far behind with 58,363 participants.
In fact, three of the top five most popular sports for boys are played in the spring, and two of the top five most popular girls sports, with softball bringing up a close sixth.
Here’s how the numbers break down for the top five most popular boys sports by participants in the state of Washington for 2013-14:
1, Football 21,036
2, Track and field 13,005
3, Basketball 11,062
4, Soccer 10,169
5, Baseball 9,247
And the top five for girls:
1, Volleyball 10,924
2, Track and field 9,988
3, Soccer 9,161
4, Basketball 8,704
5, Tennis 7,029
But here is where spring rules the day. Football, with all of its participants, plays games once a week, for a regular season that lasts nine or 10 games.
Baseball’s regular season consists of 20 games, and so does softball’s season. The soccer season consists of 16 matches.
That means all of those teams are playing two, three or more games a week. Then you throw in all the tennis and golf matches, plus track and field meets and the schedule swells.
Just take a look at this week’s prep sports schedule. I count 150 events on the schedule, not counting baseball and softball doubleheaders. And those are just the events we know about. We’ll do our best to report the results of all of those events, with all of those participants.
Coaches can help us out. If your event starts at 3:30 p.m. and is over by 5:30 p.m., please don’t wait until 10 p.m. (or later) to report your results. “Oh, we drove the bus back to school, then I went home and had dinner before I called.” NO!
The preferred method of reporting results is email (sports@columbian.com). Fax works, too. Gamechanger rocks for baseball and softball. Athletic.net is handy for track and field.
If you must call, we’d love to talk to you. Just know, with all of these events, the more coaches who call in, the fewer calls we’ll be able to answer.
So bring on the spring sports season, with its busy days, rainouts and rescheduled events.
We’ll be ready.
Tim Martinez is the assistant sports editor/prep coordinator for The Columbian. He can be reached at (360) 735-4538, tim.martinez@columbian.com or follow his Twitter handle @360TMart.
