A pair of fall high school sports in the southwest are continuing to experience declining participation.

The most alarming of the pair is golf which has saw its figures dwindle down another 40 per cent this past year causing some schools to stop taking part in the sport.

Athletic Coordinator for Chinook School Division Deb Reamer said the lack of golfers participating in the Saskatchewan High Schools Athletic Association isn't just being witnessed in the southwest.

"I think the numbers provincial wise are kind of dropping a little bit in golf too," she explained. "I don't think it's specific to the southwest."

Reamer did note that some high school students don't have access to golf courses and some pick other sports (football, volleyball, and soccer) over playing golf.

"Certainly we could try and incorporate some grade eights, so get some younger kids and giving them that exposure," she said. "They could not advance to provincials, they wouldn't be eligible because they aren't old enough, but that might be another option we have to look at."

Only 15 students partook in SWAC golf in the 2017 season, with zero females, compared to 2008 when 72 participants hit the links, 15 of them being females.

"And as to how we appeal to females, I'm not sure, our female numbers have been dropping for a number of years," Reamer said.

The second sport struggling with low participation among high school students is cross-country running, a program that is offered to younger grades but continues to see high school numbers decreasing.

"We're competing against a number of other sports," she said. "So if I'm part of a team, I'm going to have to make a choice, am I going to go that weekend to my football game, soccer game or volleyball tournament or am I going to run? Once you put a choice in front of kids, in the case of team sports, I think a lot of kids chose the team sport first."

While this past year 126 students participated in running - only 17 of those were at the high school level with the remaining 109 in grades 4-8.

One sport that appears to be on the upswing in the southwest is archery with four schools (Consul School, Shaunavon High School, Swift Current Comprehensive High School, and Gull Lake School) now offering the National Archery in Schools Program.