New WSF Report Shows Why The Women’s Sports Boom Hasn’t Reached Girls

According to a new Women’s Sport Foundation (WSF) report, released today, much of the momentum across collegiate and professional women’s sport has not yet made its way to the girls who are expected to sustain the pipeline. The inaugural WSF Sport Report 2026 is based on a nationally representative survey of over 3,000 children between the ages of 8 to 18, their parents/guardians, and 60 senior leaders across the women’s sports industry. Based on the results, the report sheds an important light on the unique pipeline obstacles that sustain for girl athletes.

The push to get and keep girls in the game has largely been due to the benefits girls can expect to experience. Previous research that has determined there are many positive outcomes that can emerge for girls through their consistent participation. Specifically, youth sport participation has been found to foster the development of positive life skills while also supporting positive health and well-being. For girls and women specifically, the advantages and outcomes of sport participation in terms of leadership development and career progression are especially significant. Previous research has determined that the majority of current women CEOs of Fortune 500 companies participated in at least youth sport growing up. Research has also determined that sport participation decreases the prevalence of mental health issues and improves social well-being among girls. Despite these benefits, estimates reveal that roughly 50% to 70% of girls drop out of sport by age 14. The WSF Sport Report 2026 findings help to explain why, despite the incredible benefits to participation, girls continue to either drop out of sport at high rates or do not enter sport participation at all.

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Girls Want to Play

The report also challenges a long-standing assumption that girls are simply less interested in sport. Specifically, among girls ages 8 to 18 who have never played organized sports, 54% say they want to, a rate equal to boys (52%). Interest is even higher among Hispanic girls (61%) and Black girls (58%). Still, only 45% of girls currently play organized sports compared with 52% of boys, and the gap can appear in children as early as ages 8 to 10. According to WSF CEO Danette Leighton, “We have to stop assuming that who is playing tells us who wants to play. A girl can be interested in sports and still never make it onto a roster because the opportunity wasn’t there, the cost was too high, the right sport wasn’t offered or she didn’t see a place for herself in the environment that existed.”

These findings echo previous research on the sport socialization of Hispanic and Latina women competing in NCAA Division I athletics. At the time of that study, Hispanic and Latina women accounted for just 2.2% of all female Division I student-athletes, despite Hispanic and Latino students representing 16.5% of those enrolled in U.S. colleges and universities. According to the research, family members and coaches were critical to introducing these athletes to sport and supporting their persistence, and access emerged as an additional factor. Several participants grew up in communities without a girls’ program and began playing on co-ed teams, on their brothers’ teams, or through informal play at home. The WSF data suggest similar barriers persist today, as 47% of Hispanic girls have never played a sport and 75% of Hispanic parents of girl athletes wish there were more teams and leagues available for their daughters.

Further, the report indicated that any gains that have been made since the passage of Title IX have not been shared equally among all girls and women across sport spaces. Specifically, schools that rely on the third prong of the law’s three-prong test must show that they are fully and effectively accommodating the interests and abilities of girls. As noted by Leighton, “The absence of a girl from a team shouldn’t automatically be read as the absence of her interest in being there.”

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Findings also revealed that cost can further compound these barriers. The median annual amount spent on sports for girls is around $500, compared with $400 for boys. Household income can further divide who gets to play, even more than gender, as only 31% of girls in households earning under $50,000 currently play, compared with 58% of girls in households earning over $100,000. That 27-point gap is roughly four times the size of the gender gap itself.

The Dream Gap

One of the most significant findings in the WSF report focuses around the concept of belonging. Findings revealed that at ages 8 to 10, 80% of both girls and boys feel that sports are “for someone like me.” By the ages of 14 to 18, that figure falls to 66% for girls and 73% for boys. By the teen years, the aspirations to compete professionally follow a similar pattern, as only 38% of girls who play or have played still dream of becoming a professional athlete, compared with 58% of boys.

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While 41% of both girls and boys who quit say sport stopped being fun, girls are more likely to cite friends who stopped playing (15% vs. 8%), not liking their coach (12% vs. 7%) and a changing body (11% vs. 5%). These findings align with previous research identifying the onset of puberty and menstruation as a leading factor in girls’ discontinuation of sport. Experiences related to puberty and menstruation are often accompanied by stigma, which serves to reinforce gendered stereotypes that position the female body as incompatible with norms of competence, particularly in men-dominant spaces such as sport.

According to three-time Olympic medalist Gabby Thomas, who also serves on the WSF Board of Trustees, “Many of these reasons [for leaving sport] aren’t really about the sport itself. A girl may still love running or basketball or soccer, but if she no longer feels connected to her teammates, comfortable in her changing body, or supported by her coach, the experience of being an athlete can start to feel different.” Thomas added, “We often talk about getting girls into sports, but we have to be just as intentional about creating environments that give them reasons to stay.” Thomas did not grow up dreaming of a professional career herself, “The goal is to make sure she gets to stay in sports long enough to discover where they might take her. For one girl, that could be a professional career. For another, it could be an education, lifelong friendships, confidence, or leadership skills she carries into an entirely different career.”

If She Can’t See It

Role modeling has also been identified as a significant barrier to getting in the game. While American audiences spent 28.6 billion minutes watching women compete in the first half of 2026, 45% of girls cannot name a favorite professional athlete of any gender, compared with 29% of boys, and the most-named woman among girls, Caitlin Clark, is cited by just 5%. The gap deepens along income lines, as only 14% of girls in households earning under $50,000 name a woman athlete as their favorite, compared with 27% of girls in households earning over $100,000.

Role models help shape who children believe belongs in sport, and these findings suggest that access and visibility reinforce one another. According to Thomas, “A girl shouldn’t need a ticket to a major sporting event, a paid subscription or access to a particular [media] platform to regularly see women athletes and learn their stories.” Visibility has also been linked to the financial realities of elite competition; 67% of the report’s expert panel identified inadequate year-round financial support as the greatest barrier facing women athletes. As Leighton explained, “When a woman can’t afford to stay in sport…we risk losing everything her career could have represented to the girls watching her.”

Title IX and the Pipeline

The report also revealed a significant gap in rights literacy specific to Title IX. Of girls aged 8 to 18, 79% had never heard of Title IX, along with 55% of parents. Awareness was also found to be the lowest among the girls facing the steepest barriers to participation, falling to 17% among Black girls and 13% among girls in the lowest-income households. This knowledge gap meets a precarious moment in the history of equity policy, as roughly half of the report’s expert panel (47%) identified Title IX rollbacks or weakened enforcement as the greatest threat to progress in the year ahead. According to Leighton, “Girls shouldn’t have to become experts in Title IX to receive the opportunities it promises them. Strong enforcement means accountability.”

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College emerged as the level of greatest concern, and the only level where more experts said conditions for women declined (37%) than improved (35%) over the past year. In 2024–25, men received $534 million more in athletic scholarships than women. Leighton, who spent 12 years at the Pac-12 Conference, cautioned that women’s and Olympic sports become increasingly vulnerable as conference realignment, revenue sharing, and the House v. NCAA settlement push more resources toward football and men’s basketball. As she noted, “We need transparency around where resources are going, clear Title IX guidance for new payment structures, protections for broad-based sports and intentional investment in women’s programs…Women’s sports can’t be treated as the next big trend, where investment surges when attention is high and retreats when the market shifts.”

It becomes clear through the findings across the WSF report that too many girls are deciding whether sport is a place where they belong all while lacking equitable access, supportive environments, or women athletes rolemodels. According to Leighton, “Investing in women’s sports doesn’t have to begin when an athlete reaches the professional level. It can begin with the girl who hasn’t had her first chance to play.” Thomas shared how personal the stakes are, “Sports opened doors in my life that I didn’t even know existed when I was 12,” she said. “Every girl deserves the chance to see which doors sports might open for her.”

Ultimately, closing the gap between girls’ interest in sport and their opportunity to play will require intentional investment, stronger accountability, and environments that give girls reasons to play and reasons to stay. The desire to play is already there, debunking the most common myth associated with the lack of girls competing, so the responsibility now lies with the leaders and institutions that determine whether girls get the chance.

You can access and read the report here.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com

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