LOS ALAMITOS — The numbers by themselves don’t lie. But trying to interpret them can be confusing.
The California Interscholastic Federation state office released a statistical breakdown earlier this month indicating that overall student participation in interscholastic sports in the 2025-26 school year had increased by 1.6%, to 835,088 participants statewide.
However, participation in 11-man tackle football throughout California decreased 4% to 87,718. That’s the largest drop since 2021-22, in the wake of COVID-19, and it suggests that some parents are more cautious about allowing their sons to play.
So, for our annual start-of-season interview with CIF Southern Section commissioner Mike West, that was the first question: How do those numbers translate in the Southern Section, and are there particular danger points to be aware of here?
“I looked at the data too,” he said. “I found it very, very interesting. I don’t – I wish they could actually break it out by section. It would be really neat because we don’t have all that minute detail with all the different sections of the state.
“Football was down a little bit and the boys’ (overall) participation was up a little bit, but the girls’ participation is what’s really looming.”
The subliminal message, perhaps: All hail girls flag football!
It is only the sixth-most popular sport on the girls’ side (the first five are soccer, volleyball, track and field, softball and basketball), but it is growing rapidly. Its 24,979 participants last fall represented a 25.4% increase, and also keep in mind that since flag football was introduced as a CIF varsity sport in 2023, many of its athletes have played multiple sports.
“There was an anticipation that it would definitely be popular,” West said. “To the extent that it has become what it is I don’t know if anybody could have anticipated that. But no, I think we all felt that it was a winner and that it would begin to expand.”
It has grown quickly enough that some schools that started out with just varsity teams now have three levels of competition.
Oh, and there’s this wrinkle too:
“Now all of a sudden, the club scene in girls’ flag is becoming more prominent,” he said. “It was so nice in the first year or two. It was, ‘I just want to go out and have fun in a different sport.’ Now that club piece is coming in, just like in so many other sports. It was inevitable, but the purity of it when it first started was really, really glorious to experience.”
The relationship between what CIF officials and school administrators call “education-based sports” and the outside actors who run club or travel teams – and in some cases seem to be profit-driven – can be an uneasy alliance. West specifically referred to soccer, played in the winter months on the high school calendar, as a sport where conflicts occur as largely a function of scheduling, and some talented players have to choose between school and club.
“That’s the one that we see most often,” West said. “And there’s more tension there than in others. There’s many other sports that really, as long as they have their seasons outside of our season of sport and outside of practices, we have many of our athletes and coaches that are in clubs.
“So in some ways it can be symbiotic, but it’s only as long as they recognize what our rules are, what our expectations are. … It’s when there’s a disregard for those types of things that things become a challenge.”
And there was this passage that might be the single best description of why school-based sports matter:
“Our role is not to win the World Cup,” he said. “Our role has provided opportunities for all athletes of all ages, of all socioeconomic statuses, an opportunity to participate. And I think we do a very good job of that.”
Different parents look at the role of high school sports differently. And, no surprise, some take it to an extreme. In our conversation, the difficulty in retaining game officials came up, again. The bottom line, as always, is that spectator behavior in a lot of cases drives potentially good officials away.
“We’ve promoted the idea of having two of the players, before games, go up to the mic and read the script on sportsmanship,” West said. “And it’s something that many schools do, not all of them, but many schools take advantage of that. And those that have done it have said that it’s created quite an impact, because parents are going to listen to the kids much more so than the principal getting on the horn or the athletic director or the announcer.”
If that doesn’t work, there is the CIF bylaw stipulating that if a spectator is ejected from a game for bad behavior, it’s an automatic three-game ban from school events in that particular sport – and that spectator can’t attend any of that school’s other sports events during that time, either.
“Let’s say a parent gets ejected from a JV basketball game and they have another child that plays soccer,” he said. “Well, until they’ve fulfilled that obligation to sit those three JV basketball games, they can’t go watch any other game during that time.”
The other hot button issue, as always, concerns transfers.
Would the Southern Section support a statewide rule allowing athletes one free transfer at any point in their careers? West parried that question because “there’s still litigation involved in the possibility of evaluating our transfer processes, as well as NIL. So it’s hard for me to comment on any of those things right now.” But he did say there have been discussions, and when the legal matters are cleared up the subject likely will be discussed again.
West did say that in the last school year there were 30% fewer change-of-residence forms filed than the previous year.
“I think that’s because we’ve been able to find instances where there’s been fraudulent paperwork being submitted, and we’re holding the families and those individuals accountable (regarding) eligibility,” he said. “And I think that has perhaps kind of turned the tide on families wanting to do that.”
There are rumors that the CIF office has been using artificial intelligence to help ferret out suspicious or fraudulent transfer applications. West parried that question, too, understandably. Why give away any secrets?
“Just let it be known that we’re just becoming more adept at identifying typical ways that individuals are altering their documents,” he said.
In other words, athletes – and parents – beware.
Further highlights from this conversation are available online at https://www.ocregister.com/2026/08/22more_from_mike_west/
jalexander@scng.com