State High School Sports Safety Policies

Preparing for an emergency should be the top priority for schools to ensure the safety of their athletes. Through the implementation of required policies and procedures, schools can be well prepared in the unfortunate event of a catastrophic injury.

At the Korey Stringer Institute, we have utilized best practice documents related to the top causes of sudden death in high school athletes to compile a group of policies that represent these best practices. These polices are relevant to the best practices developed for the top causes of sudden death in sport. Based off the “Inter-Association Task Force Document Preventing Sudden Death in Secondary School Athletics” document, the policies outlined on this website were evaluated directly from publicly available resources such as state high school associations and legislative websites.

Ranking of states regarding the implementation of evidence-based best practices for preventing and managing the leading causes of sudden death in secondary school athletics. State-Level Implementation of Health and Safety Policies to Prevent Sudden Death and Catastrophic Injuries Within Secondary School Athletics, the study which details the results, is published in The Orthopedic Journal of Sports Medicine.

2025-2026 State High School Sports Safety Policy Evaluation

You can sort the list by score or alphabetically by state.

 

Rank State Score(%)
1 Georgia 93.67
2 Florida  93.0
3 New Jersey 85.0
4 New Hampshire 84.0
4 Louisiana 84.0
6 Vermont 79.0
7 Kentucky 76.58
8 North Carolina 71.87
9 Tennessee 71.75
10 Delaware 70.84
11 Massachusetts 69.4
12 District of Columbia 69.0
13 Utah 67.4
14 Arizona 63.0
15 Illinois 62.2
16 Texas 61.38
17 Arkansas 58.95
18 New Mexico 58.75
19 South Carolina 57.6
20 Connecticut 57.53
21 Wisconsin 57.2
22 Kansas 56.18
22 Rhode Island 56.18
24 Washington 55.13
25 West Virginia 54.75
26 Nevada 54.0
27 Iowa 53.38
28 Oklahoma 52.5
29 Missouri 52.33
30 Indiana 52.0
31 New York 51.75
32 Pennsylvania 51.0
33 Maryland 50.2
34 Ohio 49.0
35 California 47.6
36 Alabama 47.39
37 Oregon 46.97
38 Michigan 46.2
39 North Dakota 46.0
40 Hawaii 45.4
41 South Dakota 43.6
42 Idaho 42.0
43 Alaska 41.4
44 Nebraska 41.0
45 Colorado 40.2
46 Virginia 39.0
47 Mississippi 38.0
48 Montana 37.6
49 Minnesota 34.0
50 Wyoming 31.4
51 Maine 30.0