Golf coach Angela Chancellor started playing sports in high school on a boys baseball and boys golf teams. Opportunities for girls to play sports were limited, but Chancellor had one dream – become a professional golfer.

While Chancellor was in high school, changes started to become noticeable. Her dreams came closer to reality when softball teams and girls golf teams were added to schools in her area.

“We recruited our basketball coach to be our golf coach so we could have a girls team,” Chancellor said. “It was almost like you had to go out and hustle on your own. If you wanted to have a team, you had to go find coaches and find people to do it. Now it’s like it’s provided. Everything’s more equal.”

Chancellor’s experience wasn’t unusual at the time. Many schools still had limited opportunities for girls in athletics, but nationwide change already started and it was all due to the passing of Title IX in 1972.

The impact of Title IX

Title IX encourages education programs that receive federal funding to offer equal opportunities for girls and boys in sports. This opened the door for new opportunities for girls in sports and many schools at the collegiate level began implementing new policies to satisfy the law.

Co-algebra teacher Marti Purcell graduated high school in 1981 and saw the benefits of Title IX as a Div-I swimmer at Texas A&M, where nine girls sports were first added in 1972 and included swim. In comparison, the boys swim team began in 1931.

“People wanted their schools to be in compliance with Title IX,” Purcell said. “If the guys had a nice locker room, the girls had to get a nice locker room. What happened was NCAA realized, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve been funding the men all this time. We have a lot more money, so we’re going to take in women.’”

According to a National Federation of State High School Association survey from 1971, the year before Title IX was passed, 294,015 girls participated in sports nationwide. Now, over 50 years later, girls’ sports participation has reached an all-time high.

The survey from the 2024-25 school year recorded 8,260,891 high school girls participating in athletics. Texas leads participation nationwide with 364,020 girls in high school sports.

Although, some sports have consistently been popular among girls.

Track leads in participation

Since Title IX was passed, outdoor track and field leads all sports in participation. The biggest increase came immediately after Title IX was implemented when participation went from 62,211 in 1971 to 299,215 in 1973.

Senior Madi Staggs started competing in track and field in middle school and quickly found a passion for the sport. She embraced the technicality, especially in hurdles and jumping events.

“The feeling I get when I cross the finish line is literally something I’ve never felt before,” Staggs said. “I can’t even explain it.”

Staggs is an example of the opportunities now afforded to girls in high schools. As a freshman, she competed in five different sports. Now, Staggs has found success in track and field and won a state title in competitive cheer.

Staggs is one of the 513,808 girls that participated in track during the 2024-2025 school year, according to NFHS. As a senior, she has started to see more growth on the school’s team as well.

“We’ve had a lot of girls join the track program for instance this year,” Staggs said. “There’s so many girls that I’m just like walking around thinking they would be so good at this sport but then they didn’t join it and I feel like this year especially we’ve had so many people join.”

Wrestling, flag football lead in growth

Other sports haven’t always had high participation numbers.

When Jeff Knight started coaching at Kingwood Park 16 years ago, the wrestling program only had four girls. This year, the program had 16 girls.

The growth of the sport was noticeable in the past 10 years, and is considered one of the fastest growing sports nationwide – reaching over 74,000 participants in the last school year.

“If we could get some of the big Texas schools – if Texas A&M or University of Texas, Baylor, Texas Tech, any of the bigger schools – if they would ever start college wrestling, it would even multiply (the participation numbers),” Knight said. “Nationwide, more and more colleges are adding wrestling, and they see the participation. So I think that’s going to continue to grow. We just need one of those big colleges in Texas to take that jump and then all others will follow.”

As of June 2025, there were 112 college wrestling teams – mostly at the Div. III level. This year, the NCAA created the first national tournament for women, which will showcase the top women wrestlers at the Div. I, II and III levels.

Along with wrestling, girls flag football became one of the fastest growing sports because of new programs across the country.

Recently, the International Olympic Committee approved the addition of men’s and women’s flag football to the 2028 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. However, at the high school level, the  University Interscholastic League has not sanctioned girls flag football teams and is continuing to study the addition.

“I definitely think that there would be a big chunk of girls who would want to at least try it just because it would be so new,” Staggs said. “I feel like when a sport becomes official like that, it’s always like there’s a big group of people who want to try it out.”

In the past three years, flag football has reached over 68,000 girls nationwide.

However, without high school teams to play on, some athletes joined youth teams started by  the Dallas Cowboys and Houston Texans. Both programs were created to campaign for the sanctioning of the sport.

State of girls sports today

This year, girls’ athletic participation reached an all-time high and is continuing to rise as interest grows. This led to some state programs creating more opportunities for girls in athletics.

“It makes me proud to see,” Knight said. “UIL did a really good job. They added two more weight classes and so now there’s 14 weight classes for girls and just gives more opportunities.”

In 2023, NFHS proposed the idea to add two weight classes for state associations that wanted more opportunities in competition. UIL accepted the proposal and now has 14 weight classes for girls competition.

At the professional level, women’s sports viewership has reached an all-time high – specifically in the WNBA and NWSL. Both leagues are facing rapid growth and are adding new teams each year. In addition, the Professional Softball League will start in June of this year.

The NCAA reached their highest participation numbers in the 2024-2025 school year. Viewership among collegiate basketball and volleyball has grown rapidly since 2023.

“There’s not any limits anymore,” Chancellor said. “There used to not be girls wrestling and now that’s huge. Whenever I started, there wasn’t softball, but then they were able to add that. It was pretty much like basketball, volleyball and track. That’s all there was available for women. Then they realized, okay, women can actually run cross country and women can do other things.”

Women’s sports are continuing to grow and participation across all sports has seen rapid growth. With so many new opportunities across all levels of athletics, high school girls across the country are joining more sports – all because of Title IX.

“I am so pleased,” Purcell said. “It’s just amazing how women have continued to grow and get an audience now. People watch collegiate women’s basketball. They watch basketball. People love watching softball – it’s all over television now. All women’s sports are so easy to be seen now – they’re so publicized.”

This story was originally published on KP Times on April 8, 2026.