Longtime Bel Air girls basketball coach Calvin Skelton used to walk into a packed gym on the first day of tryouts every winter.

He rarely needed to recruit. The players came on their own.

Not anymore.

Once a model of consistency in Harford County, Skelton’s program now reflects a growing problem facing girls basketball programs across the country: Participation is declining.

There are few clear answers as to why, and even fewer solutions. Bel Air once routinely drew more than 40 players to tryouts. This season, Skelton struggled to field full varsity and junior varsity rosters, totaling just 24 players.

The Bobcats’ win totals have suffered. So has Skelton’s passion to keep coaching.

“This is the fewest kids that I’ve seen playing,” the coach in his 22nd year at Bel Air, said. “It breaks my heart.”

Skelton isn’t alone. Since the 2005-06 season, high school girls basketball participation has declined 21.4%, according to participation data released by the National Federation of State High School Associations following the most recent academic year.

That drop has come despite nearly 1,000 additional schools offering the sport. Maryland has followed the same trajectory, though at a slightly slower pace, with participation declining 14.1% over the 20-year span, a drop coaches across the state say has still been deeply felt at the program level.

“It’s a national concern,” River Hill coach Teresa Waters said. “Kids are pulled in a lot of different directions.”

A shrinking pipeline

Across more than a dozen coaches in the Baltimore metro area, the most commonly cited factors behind declining participation were increased specialization in club sports and the year-round time commitment they require, followed by social pressure, scheduling conflicts with other sports and lingering COVID-related impacts.

In Maryland, shrinking participation has begun to show up most clearly at the junior varsity level, where programs are struggling to field full rosters — or abandoning JV teams altogether.

In Howard County, Reservoir coach Deb Taylor said several schools either lack JV teams or are forced to cancel JV games because opponents don’t have enough players. At Catonsville, Mike Mohler has seen similar strains, with programs relying heavily on younger players or pulling JV athletes up to varsity just to get through the season. The Maryland Public Secondary Schools Athletic Association did not provide data on how many schools are currently without a JV team when contacted by The Baltimore Sun.

The loss of JV teams, coaches say, not only limits playing opportunities, but weakens long-term development. The pipeline of players who gain experience before varsity is gradually shrinking.

There’s one popular theory that the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the decline. From the 2018-19 season to 2021-22, girls basketball participation in Maryland fell from 4,163 to 3,668 — an 11.9% decrease. Shutdowns disrupted entire age groups during key developmental years, and some players who stepped away never returned. Participation has rebounded modestly since then, rising 8.3%, but remains well below pre-pandemic levels.

“It turned a lot of kids into home bodies,” Northeast coach Michael Parker said. “A lot of kids were home every day, all day — secluded from everybody on the phone, playing video games, whatever it may be, but they were not really playing sports.”

Skelton said his program “never really recovered out of COVID.” After reaching a state quarterfinal in the 2019-20 season, almost nobody from that team ever suited up for the Bobcats again.

Boys basketball has not experienced the same COVID-19 drop-off. In Maryland, participation declined 3.7% from 2018-19 to 2021-22, but numbers have since rebounded to slightly above pre-pandemic levels.

The decline in girls basketball players began earlier than the pandemic in Maryland. Participation started to fall during the 2014-15 season.

Skelton also hypothesizes that middle school programs could be doing more harm than good.

“A lot of girls that got cut from middle school, they were like, ‘Well, then I won’t make the high school team,’” Skelton said. “And then all of a sudden, this sixth grader who might have played and might have become a good player, at age 11 is now like ‘My basketball career is over.’”

Pulled in other directions

While some schools have seen slight improvement this winter, Mohler said the long-term damage came from what replaced that time: year-round club sports, especially lacrosse, soccer and volleyball, that conflict with winter basketball and draw athletes away early.

The result, Mohler said, has been the erosion of recreational leagues that once formed basketball’s foundation, leaving fewer pathways for mid-level players to develop.

Mount de Sales coach Trish Armstrong said the trend has also introduced a financial divide. Private training, club fees and travel have increasingly become prerequisites for competing on top teams — and for being seen by college coaches — leaving players without the resources to participate year-round behind.

“When you siphon off all the best players, the mid-level kids go, ‘Ah, I’ll do something else,’” Mohler said. “The ‘I’ll do something else’ is where we get hurt.”

Many coaches say families aren’t abandoning high school basketball out of indifference. The recruiting structure simply pushes them elsewhere. College coaches can evaluate dozens of prospects in a single weekend at club tournaments, while a high school game counts as just one evaluation and is often played while college programs are in season.

The result has been added pressure to specialize early, making multi-sport participation harder to sustain — especially for public-school athletes balancing academic demands, practice limits and rising costs.

“You get a kid who’s really good at several sports and wants to be a great teammate, wants to be able to be counted on, but they’re being pulled in two different directions by the adults in the room,” Taylor said.

“The risk of burnout is high, and so is your risk of injury and fatigue.”

From a college perspective, Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese said the sport has not lost top-end talent. Elite players are still finding their way to college programs.

Her concern is earlier in the pipeline.

“They are asked at a younger and younger age, to commit year round to one sport, which you know is unfortunate,” Frese said. “I’m always going to be a proponent of playing multiple sports.”

Still, some coaches caution against placing the blame solely on club sports themselves.

Carole Ferrante, a longtime club volleyball coach currently with Columbia Volleyball Academy and the coach at Reservoir, said club athletics exist on a wide spectrum — from elite, college-driven programs to lower-commitment teams built for multi-sport athletes.

“I don’t think the club is the full indicator as to why there might be decline in other sports,” Ferrante said. “It’s definitely possible to play more than one sport … I think we have to allow kids to have the opportunity to grow into who they want to become and find their different interests. My concern is when a kid does only pigeonhole themselves into one thing.”

That tension is felt by players, too. Kiersten Rurka, a senior at C. Milton Wright who previously played at St. Frances and Mount Carmel, said the NCAA transfer portal could be a deterrent from some. Its growth has negatively impacted high school recruiting, Rurka, a college commit, said, leaving some feeling like there’s little future in basketball.

She also noted that basketball has become less of a priority for some athletes — more a bridge between fall and spring seasons than a long-term pursuit.

Fallston coach Johnny Woods sees the same dynamic.

“It’s probably more of a lacrosse and soccer hotbed,” Woods said. “All other sports are really just borrowing athletes.”

That local trend mirrors national data. Basketball ranked eighth in total participation among Maryland high school girls sports last season, according to NFHS figures, trailing sports like softball, cheer and lacrosse. In Maryland, outdoor track and field led all girls sports, followed by volleyball and soccer.

There is no single fix for reversing the decline, coaches say, but many point to the same themes: encouraging multi-sport participation, easing year-round club demands and investing more heavily in school-based programs, particularly at public schools, while giving girls space to develop and enjoy the game without scholarship pressure.

For Skelton, the numbers aren’t abstract. Each winter, the empty space in Bel Air’s gym tells the story before the ball is even tipped.

Whether the sport can reclaim space in an increasingly crowded youth landscape may determine who shows up next winter. And who decides not to.

Have a news tip? Contact Michael Howes at mhowes@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/Mikephowes. Contact Taylor Lyons at tlyons@baltsun.com, 410-332-6200 and x.com/TaylorJLyons.