Sports in the United States All-Ireland Senior Football Championship. Field hockey is played in the United States predominantly by women. It is played widely at numerous NCAA colleges, where it is used as a sport to offset Title IX regulations assuring equal opportunities for men and women in sports (it thus offsets male-dominated sports such as college football). Handball, a common sport in European countries, is seldom seen in the United States. The sport is mostly played in the country on the amateur level. Handball is played in the Summer Olympics, but is not sanctioned by the NCAA; all college and university teams play as
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