Women’s participation in NCAA sports has reached a record excessive. So has ladies’s affect in leadership throughout faculty athletics.
During the 2024-25 tutorial yr — the most recent NCAA Sports Sponsorship and Participation data obtainable — 242,341 student-athletes competed throughout NCAA ladies’s championship and rising sports, marking a 14% improve over the previous decade. Growth is obvious in all three divisions, reinforcing the continued momentum of ladies’s sports nationwide.
At the identical time, illustration of ladies in key leadership positions, together with athletics administrators, head coaches and faculty presidents, continues to development upward, signaling progress each on the sector and in decision-making roles.
At a look
- Total ladies’s student-athletes (2024-25): 242,341.
- Emerging sports student-athletes: 6,992 (up 24% yr over yr).
- Female athletics administrators: 279 (up 24% over 10 years).
- Female head coaches: 5,126 (up 13% over 10 years).
- Female presidents and chancellors: 378 (up 27% since 2017).
Record-high participation throughout NCAA divisions
Of the 242,341 whole student-athletes competing in ladies’s sports through the 2024-25 tutorial yr:
- 235,349 competed in championship sports, up 12% over the previous 10 years and a couple of% since 2023-24.
- 6,992 competed in sports within the NCAA Emerging Sports for Women program, a 24% improve from 2023-24.
Participation progress spans all three NCAA divisions:
- Division I: 94,935 student-athletes, up 14% over 10 years.
- Division II: 59,999 student-athletes, up 21% over 10 years.
- Division III: 87,407 student-athletes, up 11% over 10 years.
The sustained decade-long progress displays continued funding, expanded alternatives and rising curiosity in ladies’s collegiate athletics.
Most-played ladies’s sports within the NCAA
Several sports proceed to anchor participation nationally.
Top ladies’s sports by participation (2024-25):
- Outdoor observe and area — 33,519 student-athletes (up 3% since 2023-24, up 16% over 10 years).
- Indoor observe and area — 31,828 (up 4% since 2023-24, up 20% over 10 years).
- Soccer — 31,200 (up 3% since 2023-24, up 16% over 10 years).
- Softball — 21,916 (regular since 2023-24, up 12% over 10 years).
- Volleyball — 19,810 (up 4% since 2023-24, up 16% over 10 years).
Fastest-growing NCAA ladies’s sports
Emerging sports are fueling among the quickest progress in ladies’s athletics.
Among the fastest-growing sports:
- Stunt: 1,231 student-athletes, up 527 student-athletes (75%) since 2023-24.
- Triathlon: 362, up 57 student-athletes (19%) since 2023-24.
- Rugby: 939, up 91 student-athletes (11%) since 2023-24 and up 250% over 10 years.
- Acrobatics and tumbling: 1,296, up 123 student-athletes (10%) since 2023-24.
Women’s wrestling, which not too long ago got here by way of the Emerging Sports for Women program, additionally noticed notable progress, rising 42% (512 student-athletes) since 2023-24 to 1,738 individuals — one of the vital vital participation jumps throughout all sports.
New NCAA championships sign continued momentum for girls’s sports
Participation progress can also be being matched by a significant step ahead within the NCAA championship panorama.
At the 2026 NCAA Convention within the Washington, D.C., space, NCAA members permitted four new women’s championships:
- Acrobatics and tumbling (inaugural NCAA championship: spring 2027).
- Stunt (inaugural NCAA championship: spring 2027).
- Division II bowling (inaugural NCAA championship: spring 2028).
- Division III ladies’s wrestling (inaugural NCAA championship: spring 2028).
It marked the primary time 4 championships have been added at a single NCAA Convention, underscoring the continued momentum behind ladies’s sports and the increasing pathways to compete for nationwide titles.
The NCAA additionally voted so as to add ladies’s flag soccer to the Emerging Sports for Women program, efficient instantly, creating a proper runway for the game to develop towards championship standing as extra colleges add varsity applications.
And two sports are poised for milestones for girls this month: The first National Collegiate Women’s Wrestling Championships are scheduled for Friday and Saturday, and girls fencers within the NCAA will compete for a separate National Collegiate ladies’s group title for the primary time on the fencing championships March 19-22. Until this yr, women and men on NCAA fencing groups have competed for a mixed NCAA group title.
Growth in ladies’s athletics leadership roles
Progress can also be evident past competitors, as leadership roles throughout the NCAA proceed to see progress for girls.
In 2025:
- 279 ladies serve as athletics administrators, a 24% improve over the previous decade.
- Division I: 62 feminine athletics administrators, up 82% over 10 years.
- Division II: 75, up 29%.
- Division III: 142, up 7%.
- 5,126 ladies serve as head coaches, a 13% improve over the previous decade.
- Division I: 1,798, up 16%.
- Division II: 1,130, up 13%.
- Division III: 2,198, up 10%.
- 378 ladies serve as faculty presidents or chancellors, a 27% improve for the reason that NCAA started monitoring the info in 2017.
- Division I: 101, up 46% since 2017.
- Division II: 100, up 28% since 2017.
- Division III: 177, up 17% since 2017.