Recent research unveils how family wealth, race and socioeconomic status shape school sports participation, countering the long-held belief that success in athletics is purely merit-based.
For generations, Americans have held a belief that sports provide a level playing field, offering all youth a chance to succeed based on talent and effort alone. However, two recent studies from The Ohio State University and Oregon State University tells a different story — one where family background plays a significant role in athletic success.
“We often think about sports as level playing fields that reward people who earn their success, but that’s not the whole story,” co-author Chris Knoester, a professor of sociology at Ohio State, said in a news release. “Success depends a lot on the advantages young people have when they grow up.”
Knoester, alongside Kirsten Hextrum, lead author of the research and assistant professor at Oregon State University, and James Tompsett, a doctoral graduate from Ohio State, uncovered these insights by analyzing data from a nationwide study of 10th-grade students followed up in 12th grade, involving nearly 10,000 students from 800 schools.
Hextrum complemented this research with in-depth interviews of 49 Black and white athletes at a college who were in sports teams predominantly like rowing or track and field but played various sports in high school.
“We found that high school and college sports are profoundly shaped by one’s socioeconomic status and other factors unrelated to talent,” Hextrum said in the news release.
The studies, published in two separate journals — Leisure/Loisir and the Journal for the Study of Sports and Athletes in Education, outlines compelling data: while 70% of students from high socioeconomic status (SES) families participated in high school sports, only 43% of those from low SES backgrounds did.
Furthermore, 27% of high SES family students reported being team captains, compared to a mere 8% from low SES families.
High SES students were also more likely to play multiple sports and continue from 10th to 12th grade.
The socio-economic divide extends into racial disparities. White students often attended wealthier schools and felt their race did not influence their sports choices. In contrast, Black athletes felt racially channeled into specific sports, revealing a significant racial dimension in sporting experiences.
“Black participants were very explicit that they felt their race had routed them into track and field,” Hextrum added, recounting the experience of one Black athlete who switched to track and field from sports dominated by white athletes. “Malcolm described track and field as a sport where he could just breathe. It was a place where he felt he wasn’t constantly being challenged or questioned about who he was.”
Conversely, white students did not report race impacting their sports decisions.
“Race was not a factor at all for white students in my study. They never felt they had to think about their race when they were making these athletic decisions,” Hextrum added.
The research highlights how parents with higher SES can afford to invest more resources — time, money and emotional support — into their children’s sports endeavors. This “intensive parenting” starts early, often initiating children’s involvement in sports and guiding them towards specific sports that offer broader opportunities.
“When you intensively parent, you have more resources to invest in your child’s athletic future, and that’s not just money. It is time, emotional investment and educational investment,” added Hextrum.
Knoester added that these parents’ education and resourcefulness provide significant advantages, from finding the best coaches to navigating complex athletic pathways.
While advantaged parents pursue what they believe to be the best for their families, this perpetuates social and economic inequalities, making it challenging for those from less privileged backgrounds to excel solely on merit.
“Our research suggests that sports aren’t always a meritocracy. Some people have built-in advantages outside of their athletic skills that will help them succeed,” Knoester concluded.
This critical research calls into question the notion of sports as an egalitarian domain and underscores the complex interplay of socioeconomic factors in shaping athletic opportunities and success.
Source: The Ohio State University