The table illustrates the variations in the number of participants aged 18 to 34 in eight different sports in the United States between 2010 and 2014.
Overall, the total number of people engaging in these activities saw a slight increase over the four-year period. While individual and outdoor activities like running, hiking, and yoga gained popularity, traditional team sports and swimming experienced a noticeable decline in participation.
In terms of growth, running remained the most popular activity, with numbers going up from 15 million to 18 million. Similarly, hiking and yoga saw large increases, increasing by 2 million and 3 million participants respectively, with yoga reaching 12 million by 2014. These three categories were the main reasons for the overall increase in total participation, which rose from 79.3 million to 80.3 million.
Conversely, team sports went down. Participation in basketball dropped from 9 million to 7.8 million, while baseball and softball saw even bigger drops, falling to 2.2 million and 2.5 million respectively. Swimming also saw a significant reduction of 2.5 million participants. Meanwhile, weightlifting remained relatively stable, with only a marginal dip from 13.5 million to 13.3 million.