By Phillip Whitten<\/p>\n
PHOENIX, February 9. HIGH school swimming — long one of the most popular interscholastic sports in the US -\u2013 is riding a new wave of popularity, even as the sport continues to find itself under assault at the collegiate level.<\/p>\n
According to statistics supplied by the National Federation of State High School Associations' \u201cAthletics Participation Survey,\u201d participation in high school swimming increased by 5.6 percent between the 2002-03 and the 20004-05 seasons. What\u2019s more, the increase is being seen throughout the country.<\/p>\n
In 2002-03, there were 236,080 high school athletes competing in swimming and diving. That number increased by 2.1 percent to 241,127 the following year. There was an even bigger jump in 2004-05 \u2013 an increase of 3.4 percent to 249,283 \u2013 probably due, at least in part, to the influence of superstar Michael Phelps and his six gold medal performance at the 2004 Olympic Games.<\/p>\n
The figures for the 2005-06 season have not been released yet, but it is believed the Phelps Effect has boosted the number of participants past the quarter million mark.<\/p>\n
Sports writer Robert Lee, writing in The Providence Journal<\/i>, notes that the number of high school swimmers in Rhode Island, the nation\u2019s smallest state, jumped from 756 to 828 \u2013 an increase of 9.5 percent \u2013 in the year between 2003-04 and 2004-05.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Phillip Whitten PHOENIX, February 9. HIGH school swimming — long one of the most popular interscholastic sports in the US -\u2013 is riding a new wave of popularity, even<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"dois","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,8,7,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-college","category-high-school","category-usa","category-zzzzzzzzz"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"\r\n