Newest Olympic sports golf and rugby in the high schools

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced today that golf and rugby sevens will be added to the program of the newly awarded 2016 Olympic Games in Rio.  How popular are golf and rugby at the high school level?  According to the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), very and not so much.

Golf is the 10th most popular sports for girls with 69,223 girls participating, although it's still well below Competitive Spirit Squads' 117,793 participants. 157,062 boys participate in high school golf nationwide, making it the 9th most popular sport for boys; below tennis but above swimming and diving.  Hazard a guess which state has the most schools and athletes playing golf in high school?  Texas, with 20,029 total participants in 2,342 schools.  California and Ohio had the next highest number of total participants.

The NFHS survey doesn't reflect what type of rugby is played at the high school level, but the numbers are pretty low whatever version is played.  The survey lists the nationwide total number of schools and participants at 29 and 779, respectively, with only two states reporting rugby as sanctioned high school sports.  California has 14 boys teams with 633 participants and 13 girls teams with 46 participants.  Vermont was the only other rugby-playing state in the survey, reporting one boys team with 46 participants, and one girls team with 54 participants.  Who do these teams play? 

Those nationwide total numbers differ slightly from USA Rugby's Youth & High School 5 Year Strategic Plan; part of their Youth & High School Year-to-Date Review presented this past June.  In that plan, USA Rugby states the number of "High School Varsity Teams" as "at least 10 girls varsity teams with 250 registered players (10 fold increase), [and] 15 boys varsity teams with 450 registered players."   Like the data in the NFHS participation survey, these numbers don't reflect the number of high school-aged kids in the US actually playing rugby (which USA Rugby puts at 25,000 registered players), just the number of teams (and players) sanctioned by high school athletic associations.  To put it another way, most kids now playing rugby are doing so in a club setting. 

Ultimately, the current reality for rugby in the US is printed on page eight of USA Rugby's June 2009 presentation material:  "42% growth in [youth and high school] membership since 2006 but ... not enough youth."  It will be interesting to see if becoming an Olympic sport has an impact on the participation levels of the sport in the years leading up to rugby's reappearance on the Olympic stage.