Downhill slope remains slippery in terms of girls’ basketball participation in Iowa

[Tom Paris]

I’m not arguing that the season is not the longest and also not arguing that basketball isn’t a difficult sport. Why would these two factors matter more to a female than it would for a male?

You brought up the guys, not me. Football isn't thriving all over the state either. We have almost always had to battle volleyball for athletes during my career. Basically, it seems like you're diminishing the long season excuse when it's always been legitimate. Christmas Break being in the middle of it is a negative for kids too.

 

[Bulldogs1974]

Wait, what? I can’t speak for dance but clearly you have never watched youth volleyball.

I have and aau volleyball at the elementary level is just about getting the ball back over. Rarely can the girls pick out the weak one and focus on her alone. It is not like the other sports in terms of attacking the weak ones.
When you get to ms/hs that certainly changes but by then those kids are weeded out. Which was the point the other sports are catching up to wrestling. When I was in elementary school we had basketball with a parent in town. The only tournament we ever played in, or knew about was the "peach basket classic" in Parkersburg and one event in cedar falls. We played 6 games in elementary. My friends that wrestled had been in 20-30 tournaments throughout elementary which is far higher today.
That system that wrestling has in place has infiltrated other sports which has led to a decline in numbers. It has weeded kids out far too early. I coached football for over 20 years. Once YSF started at the 5th grade level, you could see the numbers decline every year. We went from having 15-25 seniors out per grade (for those that never played YSF) to having 5-12 seniors (for those that played YSF). If there were a 7-7 league those numbers may have stayed up.

 

[HawkMachine]

I think our girls basketball teams has a total of 15 or so girls on it I heard.

I'm talking TOTAL.

15 fresh, soph, jr, and seniors.

That's terrible.

It's not like we are 1a either. We are pretty much a 2a/3a depending on the sport school.