In March 2020, as schools all across the globe went virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic, high schools were forced to suspend their athletic programs due to the strict at-home regulations enforced. When Maryland schools returned to in-person learning in late 2021, students who may have once been ecstatic to play a sport for their school were now hesitant due to the risk that it imposed on them and their loved ones. Now, in 2024, the number of students trying out and participating in high school sports is slowly starting to climb back to pre-Covid numbers.
According to the National Federation of State High School Associations, the increase in students playing a high school sport during the 2023-2024 season has surpassed the record level totals in 2017-2018, before the pandemic. A big part of that growth is due to the wide variety of resources available to register and try out for these sports.
This spring, one sport in the school dominated the rest in terms of students trying out and participating, is lacrosse. Over 40 students tried out for boys’ JV lacrosse and over 30 students tried out for JV girls’ lacrosse. These numbers trump those of baseball, track and softball. Sophomore Yesh Tafa tried out for boys’ lacrosse for the first time and made the team. “I had a lot of friends and coaches on the team that were encouraging me to try something new so I decided to give it a shot and It payed off,” Tafa said.
Sophomore Justin Heller, who has been a part of the lacrosse program since freshman year, said, “Returning students were told to try and capture the interest of anyone who might be interested in playing lacrosse so that’s what we ended up doing and it turned out to be a success.”
So many students tried out for lacrosse that they had to make cuts on JV for both girls and boys, which for the most part “doesn’t usually happen,” varsity boys’ lacrosse coach Ralph Bernardo said.
Even though lacrosse had the biggest increase in new students trying out, baseball also had good turnout and was able to establish a well-rounded team for both JV and varsity. Sophomore Maxwell Scherr, who has been playing on the JV baseball team since freshman year, is confident in the team’s abilities. “We still had a good amount of people tryout and I think that we’ll be just as competitive as [boys’ lacrosse] this season,” Scherr said.
Nevertheless, lacrosse being the most popular spring sport at this school is no surprise, as in 2004 lacrosse was named the official team sport in the state of Maryland. This can be represented by the 11,887 high school students in Maryland that participate in lacrosse.
Over 200,000 new students in the U.S. participated in high school sports this year according to the National Federation of State High School Associations data. Therefore, the number of students trying out for high school athletics will likely continue to climb higher as each season passes.
