A Massachusetts student, Soley Rodriguez Martinez, traveled to a tournament. Massachusetts school staff say sports travel is contributing to student absences.
School staff around the state have told reporters that sports-related travel is contributing to student absences, according to The Boston Globe. Chronic absenteeism is defined in the newsletter as missing 18 days of school, and the Globe reports that some athletes miss far more than that.
A Broader Pattern
The issue extends beyond individual students. In a Globe survey of nearly 300 Massachusetts superintendents, 26 percent said travel sports were exacerbating attendance problems in their districts.
Parent polling points in the same direction. In a Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll, one in five parents said their child had missed school for sports, with the companion article describing it as nearly one-in-five parents reporting a child missing school to travel for competitions.
Family Income and Sports Participation
A 2024 federal survey cited by the Globe found that children in families earning four times the poverty level played sports at more than twice the rate of children below that income threshold.
Travel teams can place burdens on families, and college opportunities may be part of their appeal.
What National Data Shows About Athletes and Attendance
Not all the evidence points toward sports as a drag on attendance. An American Enterprise Institute analysis of attendance records for more than 250,000 Indiana high school students found that athletes had better attendance than non-athletes, with adjustments that included poverty, the Globe reported. A separate Fordham Institute analysis using Indiana attendance data from the 2021–2024 school years found that varsity athletes' absence rate was 1.37 percentage points lower than that of non-athletes across the full year, a reduction of nearly 20 percent.
That Indiana research, which drew on a final sample of roughly 262,600 high school students in 2024, found athletes' absence rates were 0.97 percentage points lower out of season and an additional 0.88 points lower during their sports season. The study's models predicted chronic absenteeism rates of 21.7 percent for students who played no sports, compared with 15.2 percent for those playing one sport, 11.4 percent for two sports, and 10.0 percent for three sports. The researchers also found larger attendance effects for female athletes than male athletes, with the in-season effect described as effectively closing the gender gap in absences.
Nationally, an Associated Press-Ipsos poll found about one-quarter of students had participated in travel or club sports, and nine in ten surveyed parents said the benefits outweighed the costs, the Globe reported.
One Piece of a Larger Absenteeism Puzzle
Sports travel is only part of the picture school staff are grappling with. The Globe's reporting notes that broader causes of school absences include mental health issues, rising homelessness, and caution about spreading illness, while immigration enforcement has also affected school enrollment and attendance in some immigrant communities. Sports-related tournament absences, the reporting suggests, can contribute to chronic absenteeism when combined with these other factors rather than standing alone as a single cause.
Families also have financial incentives that shape when they travel. Some extend school breaks and long weekends, or travel at other times of year specifically to save money on flights, according to the Globe's reporting. Meanwhile, the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education's statewide attendance report, covering students in grades PK through 12, draws on attendance data collected each March 1 and at the end of the school year; the agency's profile page notes the dataset was last updated on September 22.
