Sport in Croatia to some extent table tennis and chess. Various amateur sport games are popular in Croatia, notably picigin. Franjo Bučar (1866–1946) is widely considered to be the father of modern Croatian sport. He founded the Croatian Sports Federation in 1909 within what was then the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Bučar introduced a multitude of mainstream sports in Croatia, such as football, alpine skiing, ice skating and ice hockey, as well as gymnastics and fencing. The Franjo Bučar State Award for Sport, the Republic of Croatia's highest award in the development of sport, is named in his honor. With the exception of the years
Sports in the United States running (25,000), and (7) swimming/diving (20,000). The most popular sport among female athletes is soccer, followed closely by track and field. Community college athletics are governed separately by the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA). Most public high schools are members of their respective state athletic association, and those associations are members of the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS). Some states have separate associations for public and non-public high schools. As of 2018, the NFHS reported 29 consecutive years of increasing high school sports participation, driven largely by growth in girls participation. The high school sports with