The 1998 study Sport and Teen Pregnancy from the Women’s Sports Foundation found that girls who participated in sports experienced a number of benefits. Among them:
1. Female Athletes Were Less Likely to Get Pregnant
Female athletes in the nationwide survey were less than half as likely to get pregnant as female non-athletes (5% and 11%, respectively). Moreover, significantly reduced rates of pregnancy were found for the subsamples of African-American, Caucasian, and Latina/Hispanic female athletes.
2. Female Athletes Were More Likely to Be Virgins
Female athletes were significantly more likely to report that they had never had sexual intercourse than female non-athletes. While 54% of the female athletes said they had never had sexual intercourse, 41% of the non-athletes reported the same.
3. Female Athletes Had Their First Intercourse Later in Adolescence
Female non-athletes were about twice as likely as female athletes to experience their first intercourse between the ages of 10 to 13 (15% and 8%, respectively in the nationwide survey, and 9% and 2% in the Western New York survey). The onset of coital activity was significantly later for female athletes than female non-athletes.
4. Female Athletes Had Sex Less Often
Female athletes in Western New York had sexual intercourse less frequently than female non-athletes. While less than a third of female athletes (30%) acknowledged having sexual intercourse four or more times during the past year, almost half of non-athletes (49%) did so.
5. Female Athletes Had Fewer Sex Partners
Female athletes had fewer sex partners than their non-athletic counterparts. While 29% of athletes in the nationwide survey said they had two or more partners during their lifetime, 37% of the non-athletes said so. The figures for the Western New York study were 24% and 39%, respectively.
6. Mixed Results for Male Athletes
Male athletes in Western New York experienced their first sexual intercourse earlier than male non-athletes. In the national study, African-American male athletes also experienced coital onset earlier than the non-athletes. However, no other consistent pattern of differences emerged between male athletes and non-athletes.
7. Athletes Are More Likely to Use Contraceptives
Among sexually active adolescents in the nationwide survey, both female athletes (87%) and male athletes (85%) reported higher rates of contraceptive use than their non-athletic counterparts. Specifically in regard to condom use, however, only female athletes were significantly more likely to report use than female non-athletes (53% and 41%, respectively).