This is exactly right. If you look at the declines all the team sports and gymansium sports (with the exception of basketball) declined in the time period including cheerleading and gymnastics. 3 sports which are up are the 3 you could social distance during the pandemic (and lots of kids got shinny new bikes during the pandemic....dirt biking right now is huge among boys 11-15...my kid always feels left out because his friends are dirt biking and he's on the soccer pitch). In addition, when schools did go back, it was tennis, golf and track which resumed when the team sports were sidelined. So some kid choosing to do a sport as a freshman in middle school might have picked golf which was "safer" pandemic wise and they could actually participate fully in (plus the golf courses were closed for a relatively short time in comparison to say dance studios).
The pandemic is going to have a lot of trickle down effects down stream. I know of at least 3 friends my son had during the pandemic that just gave up soccer during the shutdowns and never returned because their parents didn't want to either put them in a restrictive practice or risk exposing them. So that's 3 kids that after a year off just aren't going to come back and some things (like soccer and cheerleading) are awfully hard to jump back into because your friends in the interim have made progress and maybe even moved up a level. Anecdotally, a friend who teaches at a karate studio in Los Angeles also notes that people are still nervous about close contacts indoors and business has never resumed to prepandemic levels.
As for basketball, I suspect the small drop in numbers was because the hoops in the parks were closed for a relatively short time (remember when they were pulling down some hoops???) and it was easy for kids just to hang around and even shoot with their parents, which kept them somewhat interested in the game. As with other things, we will being the effects of the pandemic for a while....maybe look out for some new US tennis and golf superstars 10 years down the line.
