- December 4, 2025
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In the world of high school sports, the phrase "Title IX" has become synonymous with equality for female athletes, but it may surprise some people how drastic of an impact it’s had.
Founded in 1920, the Florida High School Athletic Association for the next 50-plus years only offered girls three sanctioned sports: swimming and diving, tennis and golf.
High school boys had nine sports sanctioned before there was a fourth option added for girls.
President Richard Nixon signed into law in 1972 Title IX, which prohibits gender-based discrimination in any education program or activity that receives federal funding.
It’s no coincidence what followed.
From 1974 to 1982, the FHSAA sanctioned girls volleyball, girls cross country, girls track and field, girls basketball and girls soccer.
The FHSAA and its member schools have been playing catch up ever since.
Many of the most recent sports to be sanctioned are girls sports, including flag football (2003), girls weightlifting (2004), competitive cheerleading (2008), beach volleyball (2022) and girls wrestling (2022).
Unsurprisingly, beach volleyball has been a perfect fit for the Sarasota area.
Sarasota, Riverview and Cardinal Mooney have each added the sport, with the latter two even building their own on-campus sand volleyball courts.
These programs have been some of the best in the state during the sport’s brief history. Cardinal Mooney made it to the state final four in 2023, and each area team finished this past spring ranked inside the top 90 teams in the state out of 257 squads.
Recent Mooney graduate Izzy Russell is the prime example of the difference of sanctioning sports like this. Russell earned a scholarship to play beach volleyball for Austin Peay this fall and experienced four years of winning.
That area success has Booker Athletic Director Carlos Woods excited about the potential to add the sport.
“We just hired Angelik Byrd as our new volleyball coach, so it’s something that I will definitely present to her to see if it’s something she will be interested in adding as well,” Woods said. “As long as she’s on board and we go through the appropriate channels to see if it’s something we can get off the ground, I’d love to add beach volleyball as well. It’s just another avenue for us to give our athletes more exposure and generate more scholarship opportunities.”
Oddly enough, flag football, sanctioned by the FHSAA over 20 years ago, took until this past spring for the first Sarasota area school to compete in games.
Booker began practicing in 2024 to prepare for its first sanctioned games this past spring, and although the Tornadoes finished with a 1-4 record, its efforts led to results.
Recently graduated receiver Jewell Kerr earned a late offer to play flag football for Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas despite playing just five games in her career.
Adding flag football makes sense at a school like Booker, which has a rich tradition of success on the football field.
Cardinal Mooney will add flag football next spring and Sarasota is making plans to add it in the near future.
“Flag football was easy,” Cardinal Mooney Athletic Director Rafael Fernandez said. “It’s one of the fastest growing sports in the state of Florida. Manatee County has them throughout their county, and for some reason Sarasota County didn’t. You see a need, you fill a need.”
For years, wrestling was a sport doing a noticeable disservice to female athletes.
Girls were allowed to compete with boys wrestlers during regular season meets, but didn't have a sanctioned postseason tournament to compete in.
That changed in 2022. It’s becoming one of the fastest-growing sports in high school athletics, and each Sarasota area school has added the sport.
Cardinal Mooney was the most recent to add wrestling this past spring, but the only reason it was late to the party was because it didn’t have a boys wrestling team until this past spring either.
Boys and girls lacrosse hasn’t caught on statewide like other new sports. There are just 204 girls lacrosse programs and 206 boys lacrosse programs, but Sarasota County has been on the forefront of adapting to the times.
Sarasota, Riverview and Cardinal Mooney have each added the sport.
Students at Lakewood Ranch High have the option to play for nearly every FHSAA-sanctioned sport.
Its most recent offerings include girls wrestling, beach volleyball, flag football and boys and girls lacrosse. Those additions have already proved to be successful.
Lakewood Ranch’s beach volleyball team won a district championship this spring, its boys and girls lacrosse teams qualified for their respective regional tournaments, and the school sent a girl wrestler — Francesca Bisordi — to the state championships for the first time.
“The sports that have been added have done really well,” Lakewood Ranch Athletics Director Kent Ringquist said. “Lacrosse is growing here. We only have two schools within our district that offer lacrosse, but we have no problem with the amount of kids who want to participate. If you look at our spring sports, and we have a lot of them, they’re all full.”
That doesn’t mean that there haven’t been drawbacks.
Ringquist said that flag football, in particular, has become a more popular sport for girls. In some cases, that means athletes have had to quit another spring sport in order to join.
That’s started to affect the school’s girls basketball team. Ringquist said participation in girls basketball has dwindled recently, likely due to athletes having so many other options.
The only FHSAA-sanctioned sports that the school doesn’t currently offer include water polo and boys volleyball. However, Ringquist said those will not likely be added because the school does not have its own pool for water polo and court time is too crowded for boys volleyball.
Braden River High has recently added girls wrestling, flag football and beach volleyball, giving more avenues for its female athletes to compete in athletics.
It didn’t take long to see that these new ventures could be successful.
The school’s flag football team went 55-9 in its first five seasons and made it to the Class 1A state semifinals in 2024. Though it had its first losing season this spring with a 4-9 record, it’s clear that the program has been a success.
Its beach volleyball team has had a winning season in each of its four years, and won a district championship this past spring.
“I think some of the stuff we consider as ADs are gender equity,” Braden River Athletic Director Matt Nesser said. “In our case, we needed to have some more female athletes to help our Title IX numbers. And there has to be interest as well. I think the FHSAA has made a push on a couple of these sports.”
On the surface, it might seem as though adding new sports comes with several new student athletes, but Nesser said that it’s often resulted in athletes from other programs simply switching to a new one.
There are no lacrosse teams at Braden River, and although Nesser said it’s ‘an up-and-coming sport,’ he said that it would be a challenge to start up a lacrosse program due to concerns of watering down other spring sports.
Out-of-Door Academy has offered boys and girls lacrosse for over 10 years now, but has yet to add any other new sports since.
As a small school, ODA faces the challenge of providing plentiful opportunities without having enough athletes to fill out new teams.
“For a school of our size, we’re strategic about any additions, considering how new sports might impact existing ones during the same season,” ODA Athletic Director Andres Parra said. “That said, when student interest is there and the timing is right, we are open to exploring new opportunities. Our goal is always to support our students in meaningful, sustainable ways.”
Parra said that the school would consider adding a new sport, but only if there is enough interest and a plan for long-term sustainability.
“Ensuring balance in opportunities for all students, especially between boys’ and girls’ sports, is a top priority for us,” Parra said. “We're proud of the equitable offerings currently available, and if interest grows in a new sport — particularly one that supports female athletes — we're always willing to take a serious look at the opportunity.”
It took decades for girls sports to catch up to boys sports at the high school level, but participation numbers are finally starting to even out.
In the 1971-72 school year — the year of Title IX — the National Federation of State High School Associations reported 3.66 million high school boys athletes in the nation compared to just 294,015 girls.
In the most recent survey conducted from the 2023-24 school year, there were 4.63 million boys participants to 3.42 million girls participants.
