The Fremont girls basketball team couldn’t play full junior varsity games when Shae Thomas first took over as head coach. Participation has increased in the four years since, with their numbers closer to where they were when she played in the mid-2010s — even though the school dropped to Class A for the current two-year cycle with an enrollment of 283 students.
“These girls really look up to our players,” said Thomas, who teaches at the elementary school. “(Junior Grace Scharlach) has a younger sister, so some of the younger girls are around her a lot and they think Mya (Turner) is the coolest person ever. It always helps when you have some good players for them to look up to.”
But, she continued, playing full JV games has remained hit-or-miss, because other schools are struggling with their numbers.
The Class A state runner-up Eagles exemplify the cyclical nature of enrollment. Participation is thin at the seventh- and eighth-grade levels (2030 and 2031), but there is significant interest at sixth grade and younger.
On the opposite end, 4A state champion Center Grove with its enrollment of 2,893 was able to have a C-team this season, a luxury it (and a number of other Indianapolis-area 4A programs) hasn’t always had.
“Having a C-team kind of depends on how many (upperclassmen) you have, then it gets down to your eighth grade class and how big those numbers are,” coach Kevin Stuckmeyer said. “It’s kind of gone up-and-down, but girls basketball participation in general has gone down.”
Indeed.
While there are natural variances from year-to-year, participation in girls high school basketball has been on a downward trend overall since 2000.
And Indiana is experiencing one of the sharpest declines.
The NFHS reported that from 2000-25, girls basketball participation declined by at least 21% nationwide, falling from 451,600 at 16,526 responding schools in 2000 to 356,240 at 18,208 responding schools in 2025.
Indiana saw a 39% decline between the 1999-2000 and 2024-25 seasons, which ranks fourth nationwide during that time frame according to a report from the Associated Press.
Girls basketball participation in Indiana
The increased relevance of switching schools has accelerated the natural ebbs-and-flows in participation for individual girls basketball programs, with parents moving their middle schoolers in-and-out of school districts.
But there are other forces driving the overall statewide trend.
“I definitely see it,” said Sidney Burton, a senior forward for 2A state champion Eastern (Pekin), a school of 384 students. The Musketeers had 18 total players this season, eight of whom were varsity-only, and played only 8-10 JV games, according to coach Taylor Drury.
“Basketball is a lot,” Burton continued. “You have to mentally and physically prepare for it. You have to get in shape, because otherwise you can get tired really easily. It may frustrate you (if) you aren’t able to do the things that you think you should be able to do, but you have to put in a little more effort, a little more work. That plays a big part in it.”
Burton’s assessment was echoed in separate interviews by Oak Hill coach Kerri Barcomb and sophomore Bri Dailey, who also plays volleyball, and Fremont juniors Grace Scharlach and Mya Turner, both of whom also run track.
“Basketball is a harder sport with a longer season than most,” Scharlach said. “You actually have to want to put in the work and not everyone wants to do that.”
“We’re different than people used to be in the old days,” observed Eastern senior Addie Smith. “People don’t want to go out there, play basketball and get sweaty. The refs aren’t always the greatest, either, and people don’t like getting beat up all the time. So when you can go play a sport that’s non-contact, that’s a lot more appealing than basketball.”
One of the more popular alternatives? Volleyball.
Whereas girls basketball is in a steady decline, volleyball has held steady the past few years, with 9,742 participants at 401 Indiana high schools in 2024-25 according to the NFHS.
Volleyball participation in Indiana
3A state runner-up Roncalli is unique (across all sports) in the number of volleyball-first athletes it has had over the years, including recent Texas grad Emma Halter (now with the Indy Ignite) and current seniors Reagan Turk (West Virginia commit) and Lydia Stahley (Missouri), all of whom played volleyball and basketball for four seasons.
They are increasingly the exceptions to the rule.
Center Grove rarely has any volleyball-first athletes, though the relationship between the two high school programs is very strong. It’s the time frame and travel, Stuckmeyer said, pointing out that the club season begins around the same time as the girls basketball state tournament.
Bellmont, a school of about 673 with a rich volleyball tradition (two titles and six semistate championships), has stayed “pretty consistently good” in terms of participation, but had only one volleyball player on this year’s 3A state championship team (nine soccer players).
“Everyone else just specializes there,” coach Andy Heim said. “I’d love to see runs like this help that, but just because of volleyball, I don’t know what that’s going to do.”
“Travel volleyball is always a thing, because I don’t feel like they support athletes playing multiple sports,” added Thomas, who had four multi-sport athletes on her roster. “The encouragement of playing more than one sport is down a little bit.”
Specialization among youth athletes has been well-documented and should be considered in these discussions, as well.
Stuckmeyer noted a general unwillingness among young athletes to pay their dues as an underclassman. Oftentimes, if they’re not playing significant varsity minutes by their sophomore or junior seasons, they will simply specialize in another sport rather than be a role player for the basketball team.
Center Grove senior Hannah Gin felt the mental drain at times last year and at the beginning of this season, worn down by playing basketball day-in and day-out year-round.
“Burnout is very common and very easy for a lot of athletes,” Center Grove senior Hannah Gin said. She experienced it at times last year and at the beginning of this season, worn down by the year-round basketball schedule.
“It’s that mental (grind) of coming back to it and being hurt and coming back to it,” Gin continued. “That can take a real mental toll and is a big contributing factor, too, because basketball is a very physically demanding sport and you don’t get that in a lot of other sports.”
While they didn’t have any potential solutions for the statewide trend, the coaches and players interviewed for this story hoped their recent success would help boost participation for their individual programs.
“I see good athletes in the hallways at Eastern and I’m like, you could contribute in one way, shape or form,” Drury said. “But success breeds success, so I’m hoping when other people see this, they want to be part of it.”
Follow Brian Haenchen on Twitter at @Brian_Haenchen. Get IndyStar’s high school coverage sent directly to your inbox with the High School Sports newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Girls basketball coaches, players weigh in on downward trend in participation
Reporting by Brian Haenchen, Indianapolis Star / Indianapolis Star
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
