Lorena Llamas’ teenage son is obsessive about soccer. In Nevada, meaning struggling via practices in direct daylight and on scalding-hot turf.
“The heat is killer,” mentioned Llamas, a mother of two in North Las Vegas. Her son, a highschool senior, has seen teammates throw up throughout some practices. “He’ll always say, ‘Mom, my feet feel like they’re on fire.’”
Parents and specialists advised The Indy that warmth is only one motive that Nevada persistently ranks last nationwide for participation in youth sports. High costs and complex scheduling points additionally play an enormous half.
Nevada has had the bottom or second-lowest price of kids on sports groups yearly since 2017 besides 2019, in accordance with knowledge collected via the National Survey of Children’s Health (NSCH), a challenge of the Census Bureau, and analyzed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University.
Although standalone knowledge for 2024 is just not but obtainable, new knowledge shared with The Nevada Independent on the last two years mixed once more exhibits Nevada coming last in sports participation, at the same time as its price ticked up barely.
Nationwide, in 2023-2024 almost 57 % of kids between the ages of 6 and 17 had been a part of a sports staff or membership. In Nevada, it was simply 46 %.
“Nevada was always a state that was never thought of for sports,” mentioned Llamas. She attributed the shortage of a sturdy sports tradition to Nevada’s warmth and smaller variety of larger schooling establishments or main sports groups. Llamas has seen extra younger folks getting enthusiastic about taking part in soccer for the reason that Raiders got here to Las Vegas in 2020.
“Our players do not get enough attention here,” she mentioned. “There is so much talent in Nevada.”
Below, we dive into among the components that contribute to Nevada’s lagging sports participation and break down the info.
Increasing costs
Most states, together with Nevada, have seen sports participation rise for the reason that COVID-19 pandemic, when most colleges canceled programming for no less than a season.
But even earlier than the pandemic, Nevada’s participation price was persistently decrease than the nation’s.
Data from the National Federation of State High School Associations exhibits the variety of student-athletes in Nevada excessive colleges has been comparatively secure, going from roughly 45,200 student-athletes in 2015-2016 to roughly 44,800 in 2024-2025. During the identical interval, Nevada’s excessive colleges added greater than 16,000 college students.
Richard Rosenkranz, a UNLV professor who research interventions to spice up vitamin and train, attributed Nevada’s low participation charges to excessive costs.
In 2022, his household moved from Kansas City to Las Vegas, the place his son enrolled in a public faculty and joined the varsity’s cross-country staff.
Rosenkranz mentioned he and his spouse had been “shocked” by the staff’s sticker worth. They needed to pay nearly $500 for his or her son to run cross-country, a one-season sport. Sports had been free at his son’s public faculty in Kansas.
“Immediately, a lot of Nevada families just cannot afford that,” he advised The Nevada Independent.
Sports costs are rising quick nationwide. Project Play, an initiative of the Aspen Institute suppose tank, found American households spent a median of $1,000 on their youngster’s main sport in 2024, a bounce of 46 %, or about $300, since 2019.
Llamas estimated her household spends about $500 every soccer season, totally on required bills for the staff and for touring to video games.
She mentioned her household was fortunate they may afford these costs.
Statewide, there are broad revenue disparities in sports participation. According to the nationwide survey’s knowledge, from 2022 to 2023 almost 3 times as many college students from high-income households (at or above 400 % of the federal poverty line) performed sports than college students from low-income households (at or beneath the poverty stage).
Nevada doesn’t waive sports charges for low-income college students, as a handful of states do. California outright bans charges for all college students.
Rosenkranz blames rising bills on cultural shifts, which have reworked youth sports from a extra informal type of enjoyable right into a high-pressure business oriented towards school recruitment.
“We’ve essentially professionalized a lot of sports,” he mentioned. To stay aggressive, Rosenkranz mentioned, educational and extracurricular sports packages want to rent full-time coaches, improve amenities and tools, and journey to tournaments.
Programs go a few of these costs onto households, or households discover themselves spending extra in non-public classes or new gear.
In its 2024 report, Project Play additionally blamed the post-pandemic shift to youngsters specializing in single sports, making competitors much more intense and costly.
Unique “burden” in Nevada
Experts say Nevada’s reliance on shift work and shorter-term labor additional complicates entry to sports.
“It poses more of a financial burden in a state where … so many parents have multiple jobs in the service industry, where kids have higher shares of parents who can’t afford it,” mentioned Rosenkranz.
Many dad and mom work in the state’s 24/7 hospitality business, the place work shifts are longer or later than different jobs and the place households cycle in and out of the state extra typically. Census data additionally exhibits that Nevada has the next share of households the place each mum or dad works, at 59 % in 2024.
That makes it tougher for fogeys to convey youngsters to apply, Rosenkranz mentioned, particularly in a state with restricted public transportation.
“Obviously, Vegas is a very transient town where people work all kinds of jobs. It’s a 24 hour city,” mentioned Scott Blackford, director of packages at Nevada Youth Sports (NYS), a corporation that runs leisure and membership sports in Southern Nevada and manages constitution colleges’ sports leagues.
To accommodate scheduling points, “We try to offer different programs, whether recreational leagues or competitive leagues, or camps, clinics, all the different programs you can offer, to fit individual families,” he mentioned.
Although NYS normally doesn’t work in conventional public colleges, he mentioned the group has run some pilot packages in order that “a child can stay after for an hourlong practice, in case mom and dad couldn’t take them to practice that night.”
NYS additionally gives shorter-term packages the place households decide to sports just for eight weeks. Programs comparable to these broaden the group’s demographic attain, Blackford mentioned, at the same time as costs rise.
“We pride ourselves on trying to not raise prices,” Blackford defined. “But, you know, everything is going up across the world.”
Other components
Nevada’s intense warmth creates additional issues.
Synthetic turf fields are more and more well-liked for field-based sports on account of their decrease upkeep costs than grass. But research has shown such fields might be 50 levels hotter than grass.
“The shade infrastructure is horrible; the weather is hot all summer. There’s an immediate lack of enjoyment,” mentioned Rosenkranz.
But Blackford mentioned Nevada’s temperatures may very well be a plus by enabling yearlong sports programming.
“Summer is going to be a little tough, but if you’re born and raised in Arizona or Nevada, you’re kind of used to it. … We’re fortunate to have four seasons of sports a year,” Blackford mentioned, whereas admitting that discovering air-conditioned amenities generally is a battle.
Rosenkranz mentioned Nevada’s low sports participation displays the state’s typically poor psychological and bodily well being outcomes.
Earlier this yr, a bill mandating day by day recess in Nevada’s public and constitution colleges — which is required in only 13 states — failed in the Legislature.
“Are there places where they can play before school? Or in the classroom, at recess, at physical education — all of the activities that happen during the school day?” Rosenkranz requested. “Or are we just asking kids to sit quietly in a lunch room?”
In 2024, solely 9.1 % of Nevada’s 12-through-17-year-olds had been bodily lively for an hour day by day. The nationwide price was 14.9 %.
Nevada additionally reviews larger charges of despair, suicide and substance use dysfunction amongst youth. It ranked last amongst states in the 2025 and 2024 surveys of youth psychological well being by the nonprofit Mental Health America.
Boosting sports participation may assist tackle these points, Rosenkranz mentioned, including that sports decrease the chance of power illness and improve mental health by giving youngsters an opportunity to socialize, resolve disagreements and problem themselves.
“Also, sports are fun,” he mentioned. “And people should be having fun.”