The popularity of volleyball is booming among secondary school students, with playing numbers growing exponentially over the past year.Volleyball is now the 4th most popular sport in the country, with the latest School Sport NZ Census data showing more than 22,000 young people are playing.It represents a massive 26% growth in playing numbers and bucks the trend of many traditional sports.Volleyball New Zealand CE Toni-Maree Carnie is thrilled with the increase in participation numbers and believes the ultimate “team nature” of volleyball, where each player is always in action, is an important factor in its popularity.“As we know access and visibility of the sport remain barriers to more young people participating,” she says. 

Girls continue to flock to volleyball with the sport now having the second-highest participation rate among young women. 14,081 girls are playing at secondary school, making it second only to netball in terms of popularity.

“Young women are coming to the sport in droves,’ says Carnie. “We know they love having fun, playing with their friends and being in an environment that is not weather dependent.”

While many of the traditional team sports showed decreases in participation, it is heartening to see that ten’s of thousands of students still were able to pull on their school jersey’s with pride. Given most of these sports were unable to deliver their traditional events on the School Sport NZ calendar in 2020, these figures are testament to the value schools and students place on these participation options. Netball remains the most popular sport in our secondary schools with over 25,000 students involved, followed by Basketball (24,000), Rugby (24,000), Volleyball (22,000), and Football (20,700).

While the challenges we faced within the school sport sector are clear to see, there was also plenty of opportunity with some sports showing increases in participation numbers. Leading this trend is Volleyball with a 26% increase in students participating over one year! Linked to this many schools saw increases to the amount of students that participated in sport when compared with the previous year highlighting the breadth of opportunity and offerings that were made available to rangatahi to participate.

http://www.nzsssc.org.nz/newsarticle/100294?newsfeedId=1207557