Basketball passes football in popularity at New Zealand secondary schools

Oklahoma City Thunder center Steven Adams goes up for a shot during an NBA game. Photo / AP

The Steven Adams effect?

Basketball has overtaken football to become the third largest sport in the country's secondary schools.

According to figures from the New Zealand Secondary School Sports Council, 25,649 students played basketball in 2017.

Netball holds the number one spot with 28,445 players, with rugby second and football now fourth.

Since 2013, the year Adams was drafted was the Oklahoma City Thunder, secondary school students playing basketball has risen more than 25 per cent.

Basketball New Zealand CEO Iain Potter says this is a good problem to have and not a revelation as they know the sport has been growing rapidly for years now.

"This is a good problem to have and not a revelation – basketball has been growing rapidly for years now. We also know that we can do a lot more. For example, we are working with our associations to try and increase girls' participation. We want to bump that figure up. In 2017 we had 7985 secondary school girls paying and 17,664 boys. There's a great opportunity for us to balance that out with more female participation.

"Overall the combined figure will likely jump again because we've also added more tournaments that focus more on participation than national titles. We've added two new tournaments this year for schools wanting a quality tournament experience, but who are not attempting to qualify for nationals," said Potter.

To get the day's top sports stories in your inbox, sign up to our newsletter here