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Since Title IX’s passage in 1972, U.S. high schools have dramatically expanded athletic opportunities for girls. Evaluations of gender equity in school athletics focus on actual participation, ignoring unmet demand among students who wish to participate but were denied the opportunity. Drawing on an exploratory survey of undergraduates at a large Midwestern university about their high-school athletic experiences, this study examines sex differences in participation in formal tryouts and in having been cut from a team. Among respondents with valid data, 73% of males and 59% of females reported having participated in at least one tryout, while 36% of males and 13% of females reported having been cut from a team. In a supplementary logistic regression, adjustment for having participated in a tryout had little effect on the sex differences in being cut: the male odds ratio declined from 3.80 to 3.50. These findings provide initial quantitative evidence of a neglected dimension of Title IX: the exclusion of male students from sports participation. If replicated in larger and more representative samples, large sex differences in unmet demand would have implications for how gender equity in school athletics is understood.

Keywords: Title IX; high school sports; team cuts; unmet demand; sex differences; gender equity