[JRutledge]

Iowa is a rural state and many people are not living in rural areas that have no industry or some kind of draw to bigger areas anymore. And girls overall do not play sports at the rate boys do. Boys will play a sport or two still, whereas girls will find a sport and not want to play anything else. And how we treat education in many rural areas is a problem. Many communities want their own schools and it is hard to get enough kids to be in the school let alone play sports or other activities.

I used to umpire baseball in the late 90s in Iowa specifically. I would go to schools right over the border of Illinois and Iowa and I went to this one school that had something like 120 kids. I believe they had 70 kids were boys out of the entire enrollment. Iowa played their baseball at the time during part of the summer. It started in May and ended in late July (high school season). They would get 60 boys to play baseball from that particular school which was almost the entire boys enrollment. Might not be the same as it was then, but boys will try to play sports that girls will just pass over. So I think it is a combination of the culture of boys and the other factors of enrollment in these schools and in that enrollment who wants to participate.

Peace