Kentucky is ending its high school field hockey championship after one more season
Kentucky will crown its last high school field hockey state champion at the 2026 to 2027 tournament. A sport needs 10 percent of the state's member schools to keep a championship, and field hockey is played at 19.
The Kentucky High School Athletic Association will end its state field hockey championship after the 2026 to 2027 tournament. The association's Board of Control voted 10 to 6 at its meeting of July 24 and 25, 2026, with one member abstaining and one absent.
The decision comes down to a membership rule. According to the board's release, any championship must meet a 10 percent minimum membership requirement to be considered sanctioned. The association has 290 member schools, which puts the bar at 29. The release says that "despite everyone's best efforts," field hockey participation "remains at 19 schools, or slightly less than 7%."
The association describes itself as a voluntary nonprofit of 290 public and private member schools, organized in 1917 and designated by the Kentucky Department of Education to run high school athletics in the state. The 10 percent rule applies to every sport it sanctions.
The title has stayed within a small group. Every state final since the 2021 season has been played among the same three schools, Assumption, Sacred Heart and Christian Academy of Louisville, according to the association's tournament records. The 2025 final matched Christian Academy of Louisville against Sacred Heart.
Nationally, the sport is larger. The National Federation of State High School Associations counted girls field hockey at 1,768 high schools and 50,764 players in its 2024 to 2025 participation survey, with 19 states reporting the sport. In 2018 to 2019, the NFHS counted 60,824 girls in the sport, a five year high at the time, at nearly 1,800 schools. When the NFHS and USA Field Hockey announced a partnership to grow the sport in April 2020, NFHS executive director Karissa Niehoff said that almost half of the states do not offer any team field sports for girls in the fall.
At the same July meeting, the board approved two new sanctioned sports, pickleball and girls flag football, starting in the 2027 to 2028 school year. The NFHS counted 68,847 girls playing it in 2024 to 2025, a 60 percent increase from the year before, as part of a record 8,266,244 high school sports participants overall.
The 2026 to 2027 season will be the last to end with a Kentucky state field hockey champion.
