Sport Participation and Academic Achievement: A Longitudinal Study

OBJECTIVES: We examined the relationship between sport participation and academic achievement in a sample of adolescents, while accounting for socioeconomic status (SES) and sex. METHODS: We analyzed data from a cohort of 271 Mid-Atlantic high school students who participated in a longitudinal study of risk and protective factors for substance use, teen parenting, and school drop out. RESULTS: Sport participation at year one predicted academic achievement in English (p < .05) and mathematics (p < .05) at year 2, while controlling for academic achievement at year one. In both instances over other independent variables and covariates in the models, sport participation explains almost 7% of additional variance in the outcomes variables. We also found a positive relationship for participants who reported parents with some college experience as opposed to parents with no college experience, between sport participation and grades in English (p < .05) but not for mathematics. CONCLUSIONS: Sport participation is positively related to academic achievement but the relationship diverges when students are compared across sex and by parental education. These findings suggest that the relationship between sport participation and academic achievement may be influenced by SES and is related to sex