The NFHS has released guidance for middle school athletics in an effort to highlight the importance of opportunities for students before high school
When school districts face difficult budget decisions, middle school sports can become one of the first targets.
Julie Cochran says that creates a problem much bigger than a canceled season.
“They tend to be on the chopping block first, because they’re trying to save the high school sports,” said Cochran, who serves as the Director of Sports and Middle Schools for the National Federation of State High School Associations.
But cutting a middle school team can also eliminate one of the most accessible ways for a young student to discover a sport, connect with classmates, and begin building a relationship with their school.
And Cochran argues it can ultimately create problems for the high school programs districts are trying to protect.
“If we cut those opportunities, we’re cutting opportunities for kids who may [never play] sports again, even at the high school level,” Cochran said.
That concern is part of the reason the NFHS has expanded its focus beyond the high school level.
The organization recently developed its Case for Middle School Involvement and Student Participation, an effort to highlight what participation in school-based sports and activities can mean during a particularly important stage of a student’s development.
Cochran said the conversation inside the NFHS began years ago as leaders recognized that middle schools were both an important developmental stage for students and the pipeline into high school activities.
“It’s such a unique age, such a unique developmental age,” Cochran said.
Middle school students can be dramatically different physically, socially, and emotionally. One seventh grader may be 6-foot-2, while another is 4-foot-8, she said. At the same time, students are wrestling with much larger questions about identity and belonging.
“Who am I? Where do I belong? What do I belong in?” Cochran said. “The school is really the anchor.”
The transition into middle school means leaving the familiarity of elementary school. Instead of spending much of the day with the same classmates, students move between classrooms and interact with a larger group of peers. Multiple elementary schools may feed into one middle school.
Sports and activities can make that new environment feel smaller.
“If you are participating in a sport, if you are participating in a band, or a choir, or an orchestra, or if you’re participating in an activity like Scholastic Bowl, or chess team, or something along those lines, this gives you this built-in group of friends,” Cochran said.
It can also introduce students to classmates they might not otherwise meet.
Cochran said those activities give students a chance to learn more about themselves while building connections with others.
Coaches can become an important part of that connection too. Because they interact with students outside the traditional classroom, Cochran said middle school coaches may be among the first adults to notice behavioral, emotional, or social changes in a student.
And the lessons learned through sports can extend well beyond learning how to shoot a basketball, run an offense, or make a tackle.
Cochran remembers learning how to manage her own emotions through competition.
“I would cry after a game,” she said. “I’d get really upset after something I did, and I needed to learn from those mistakes that I made and how to make myself better.”
She said those experiences started in middle school.
Sports are frequently labeled “extracurricular activities,” but Cochran said another phrase has become increasingly common: “the third classroom of the day.”
The idea is that learning doesn’t stop when the final academic class ends.
“High school and middle school activities and sports are all a part of the school system,” Cochran said. “And so they are all a part of the education mission.”
For a middle school student, participation can mean learning how to balance practice with homework, meet academic eligibility requirements, respond to a coach, work toward a goal, and be accountable to teammates.
Cochran said those are many of the same executive-functioning skills students develop in the classroom.
“It helps them with time management, helps them with accountability, with concentration,” she said.
That makes the debate over academics versus athletics too simplistic in Cochran’s eyes. Done correctly, education-based athletics should support the educational mission rather than compete with it.
There is another reason Cochran believes school-based opportunities matter: cost.
Private club sports, specialized coaching, travel, hotels, and tournament fees have changed youth sports economics.
Cochran pointed to 10-year-olds traveling from Indianapolis to Orlando for club competitions as an example of how far families travel—and how expensive participation has become.
“The cost of that has to be astronomical,” she said.
An Associated Press-Ipsos survey released in August 2026 found about 3 in 10 sports parents report spending more than $2,000 per year on their child’s sports experiences, with 11% reporting spending more than $5,000.
Not every family can afford that experience.
The same survey showed 70% of parents making at least $100,000 per year have kids participating in sports, while just 40% of parents earning less than $100,000 per year said the same thing.
“Not everybody has that ability, and it goes back to excluding lower-income families,” Cochran said. “If we exclude lower-income families, we’re excluding their students from participating.”
Cochran doesn’t argue that club sports don’t have a place.
“If you can afford it and you can go out and play those club sports, I’m not telling you not to play them … Absolutely, everything has its place, but so does middle school athletics and activities,” she said.
School-based sports can offer an alternative — one that gives students a chance to try something without requiring families to make a substantial financial commitment before they even know whether the child wants to continue.
That access can have consequences years later.
For high school coaches worried about roster numbers, Cochran said one answer is stronger engagement with the middle schools that feed their programs.
That doesn’t mean recruiting middle school athletes. It means building relationships with middle school coaches, helping with development, and creating consistency in how students are introduced to a sport.
For a football player, middle school may be the first time that student has ever put on pads or played tackle football, for example.
Cochran said high school coaches can help ensure those athletes learn the right techniques and receive the right message about education-based athletics from the beginning.
Expanding middle school sports isn’t as simple as deciding more students should participate.
Someone has to pay for transportation and equipment. Schools need coaches. Programs need administrators. Games need officials.
And Cochran said the structure of middle school athletics varies widely across the country.
In some states, state associations oversee middle school athletics. Elsewhere, districts, conferences, or even individual athletic directors may organize leagues locally.
The NFHS is still working to better understand that national landscape.
It is also exploring resources such as toolkits that could help an assistant principal or other administrator who suddenly finds middle school athletics added to an already long list of responsibilities.
Cochran hopes the next several years bring a clearer picture of middle school participation and greater involvement from states and education organizations supporting it.
Because when the conversation turns to the future of high school sports, she believes the starting point comes much earlier.
“The growth of sports at their high school levels really starts at their middle school level,” Cochran said.
For school districts, that makes middle school athletics more than another line in an athletic budget.
It is where many students first find a team, a coach, and a place inside their school. And it may be where the future of high school programs begins.
This story is part of the Built By Sports podcast — conversations with the athletic directors, corporate partners, and innovators building the future of public school sports.
