Tennessee Soccer Stats | Governance & Records | 2025–26
Sent Off
Tennessee threw players out of games 954 times last year, and no sport came close to soccer. I found the receipts in the TSSAA's own disciplinary reports.
Every ejection in Tennessee high school sports gets written down. The reason, the sport, the school, the penalty. Once a year the TSSAA lays it all out for its Board, and the number keeps going up.
The state's records go back fifteen seasons now, and for the first ten of them the number barely moved: 450-ish players a year, every year. Then it broke loose. From 303 in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 to 954 last season. I went looking for which sport was driving it, expecting football. It is not football. Football is flat across the entire fifteen years. It is soccer, and it is not close. Boys' soccer alone had more players ejected than football did, and boys' and girls' soccer together account for almost half of every ejection in the state. For a site about Tennessee soccer, that is a hard number to look away from.
The Damage, in Four Numbers
The 2025-26 season, across every sport the TSSAA sanctions
A Flat Decade, Then It Broke
Total players ejected across all sports, fifteen seasons. A decade of ~450 a year, a COVID dip, then three straight record highs. 2019-20 is missing because the spring was cancelled and no numbers were published.
All-Sport Ejections by Season, 2010-11 to 2025-26
Players only; coaches and fans counted separately below · hover a dot for the year
Soccer Passed Football
The same fifteen seasons, split by sport. Boys' soccer ran below football for a decade, crossed it after COVID, and is now the most-ejected sport in the state by a wide margin. Girls' soccer has more than tripled since 2020.
Players Ejected by Sport, 2010-11 to 2025-26
Top sports shown; hover a dot for the season count
Who Gets Sent Off the Most
Player ejections by program, from the TSSAA's own incident lists. Three seasons are public (2020-21, 2024-25, 2025-26); the years between were never released. Click any program for every incident it drew: the season, sport, reason, and penalty.
What Gets You Sent Off
Reasons across all sports. Soccer's fingerprints are everywhere: second cautions, denying an obvious goal (DOGSO), serious foul play, sitting right alongside the fighting and the abuse.
Boys and Girls Get Sent Off Differently
Same tournament stage, different game. Rates from the state-cup stat sheets; reasons from the statewide incident lists.
Why Players Get Ejected, by Gender
Share of player ejections, statewide lists
The Bigger the Game
Cards per game climb every round of the state tournament, they pile up in the second half, and the red ones come from teams that are losing.
Cards per Game by Round · When They Come · Score State
State-tournament stat sheets, 2016-2026
BY ROUND
BY MINUTE
SCORE STATE WHEN THE CARD COMES
Where the Cards Live, and What Doesn't Predict Them
Class and geography shape who plays whom, and how heated it gets.
Sources
Tennessee Soccer Stats (TSSE) is a personal, independent project and is not affiliated with the TSSAA or any school. Ejection and disciplinary figures are transcribed from public documents the TSSAA presents to its Board of Control. The reports record schools, sports, roles (player, coach, fan) and penalties; no students are named in them, and none are named here. Counts reflect what the association reported and can carry its own clerical quirks.