During the 2024–25 school year, more than 8.2 million students participated in high school sports, with varsity athletes representing an important subset of that group. Research shows that participation in high school sports is associated with numerous benefits, including improved engagement, fewer disciplinary issues, stronger peer and adult relationships, a greater sense of belonging, higher educational aspirations, lower rates of risky behaviors, and higher grades, test scores, and class ranks. However, research on the relationship between sports participation and student attendance has received little attention. With attendance playing a key role in student success, sports participation might affect attendance more directly than it affects achievement or graduation, since coaches often require athletes to attend school to participate in practices and meets.
A new study by Nat Malkus and Sam Hollon examined the relationship between sports participation and student attendance to determine whether participation in high school varsity athletics is associated with improved student attendance. This study is timely, as its findings may be informative in the wake of the Covid–19 pandemic–era surge in chronic absenteeism.
To examine this relationship, the researchers used multiple years of student-level, day-by-day attendance data and varsity rosters from the Indiana Department of Education (IDOE) for all students in Indiana. These data were merged by the IDOE, providing a de-identified dataset with a final sample of approximately 262,600 high school students in 2024 and approximately 370,200 students and 864,500 student-year observations across the 2021 to 2024 school years. Together, this enabled precise tracking of attendance patterns in that state before, during, and after sports seasons, as well as comparisons between athletes and non-athletes and within-student seasonal variation.
Several notable findings emerged following the researchers’ examination. Most importantly, they found that varsity athletes have substantially better attendance than other students, and chronic absenteeism is far lower among varsity athletes. Athletes are absent less often than their non-athlete peers, and their attendance improves even more during their sports season. Across the school year, athletes’ absence rate was 1.37 percentage points lower than that of non-athletes—a reduction of nearly 20 percent.
This pattern is evident across all sports, where varsity athletes’ absence rate is 0.97 percentage points lower out of season—the athlete effect—and an additional 0.88 points lower in season—the in-season effect. With the average Indiana high school absence rate being 6.54 percent of school days, these effects are large. Taken together, the combined reduction of 1.85 percentage points is especially large. These effects are consistent across multiple model specifications, including models with school and student fixed effects that control for unobservable differences across schools and students.
Sports participation varies across student demographics, but its relationship with attendance is especially strong for female, low-income, and non-white students. Both the athlete and in-season effects are larger for females (1.20 and 1.03 percentage points) than for males (0.77 and 0.81 points), effectively closing the gender gap in absences during the season. The athlete effect is nearly twice as large for low-income students as it is for non-low-income students (1.45 vs. 0.74 points), and the in-season effect is slightly larger, as well (1.00 vs. 0.85). Given higher baseline absence rates among low-income students, it is not surprising that the effects of sports participation are larger in absolute terms.
Similarly, the athlete effect is larger for Black (1.32 points) and Hispanic (1.27) students than for White students (0.90), and smaller for students of other races (0.72). The in-season effect is generally similar across groups, with Black students experiencing a somewhat larger in-season effect (1.02 points) than White students (0.87 points).
Students who participated in multiple varsity-level sports during the year had even lower chronic absenteeism rates than those who played just one sport. The researchers’ models predicted that students who played no sports had a chronic absenteeism rate of 21.7 percent, compared with 15.2 percent for students who played one sport, 11.4 percent for those who played two sports, and 10.0 percent for those who played three sports. This suggests a cumulative relationship between participation and attendance.
Finally, the researchers contend that the relationship between athletic participation and in-season attendance is likely causal. This sharp improvement in attendance during the athletic season suggests more than a correlation. Instead, the researchers argue that participation itself likely drives improved attendance through mechanisms such as eligibility requirements, coach accountability, team expectations, and students’ desire to avoid missing practices or competitions.
Given that varsity athletes consistently have lower absence rates than non-athletes, these findings suggest that athletics could serve as a meaningful lever to address chronic absenteeism. Therefore, policies like expanding access to sports—particularly in schools that serve disadvantaged students—may help reduce absenteeism gaps. Increased participation may also boost students’ motivation, accountability, and sense of belonging, reinforcing daily attendance. Finally, compared to more intensive interventions, varsity athletics may offer a relatively low-cost, scalable approach with social, emotional, and academic benefits for students.
SOURCE: Nat Malkus and Sam Hollon, “An Extra Point for Attendance: The Impact of High School Varsity Athletics on Absenteeism,” American Enterprise Institute (April 2026).
