Sports Trivia for Kids
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94 free Sports Trivia for Kids trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
48 free Sports Trivia for Kids questions with answers. This is sport trivia for kids, written so that an 8- to 12-year-old can play without help and a teenager still finds a few stumpers. The questions cover the sports children actually play and watch: how many players on a soccer, basketball or volleyball team, how high the hoop is, what a hat-trick or a strike is, which sport uses a shuttlecock, a puck, or granite stones and brooms, and the biggest events, from the Olympics and Paralympics to the World Cup, the Super Bowl and the Stanley Cup. The second half brings in the stars: Simone Biles, Serena Williams, Lionel Messi, LeBron James, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps and Wayne Gretzky, with the records and stories that make them famous. Nothing here is violent or adult, so it works for a classroom, a birthday party, a car ride or a family quiz night where the kids get to beat the grown-ups. Every answer has been checked against Wikipedia and official sports sources, and each question shows where it came from once you have answered.
30 of 94 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01How many players from each team are on a basketball court at the same time?
5
5 a side was not fixed in the rules until 1897; before that teams were as big as the gym class, and James Naismith's very first game in 1891 had nine players on each side.
Q 02How many players per soccer team take the field at kickoff?
11
11 players start for each side, one of them the goalkeeper; if injuries or dismissals leave a team with fewer than seven, the laws say the match cannot go on.
Q 03What colour must players wear on court at Wimbledon?
White
White is compulsory at Wimbledon, down to coloured trim no wider than a centimetre; Andre Agassi stayed away from 1988 to 1990, partly because the rule banned his flashy kit.
Q 04In which sport do players use sticks to shoot a rubber puck into a net?
Ice hockey
Ice hockey pucks are made of hard rubber and frozen before every game, because a warm puck bounces like a ball while a frozen one slides flat and fast across the rink.
Q 05How long is a marathon race?
26.2 miles
26.2 miles became the standard because of the 1908 London Olympics, where the race was laid out to start at Windsor Castle and finish in front of the royal box in the stadium.
Q 06Which country did the football star Pelé play for?
Brazil
Brazil won three World Cups with Pelé, the first in 1958 when he was still a teenager; the government then declared him a national treasure to keep foreign clubs from luring him away.
Q 07Simone Biles is a champion in which sport?
Gymnastics
Gymnastics now has several moves called the Biles, named after Simone Biles because she was the first to land them in competition; she won the Olympic all-around title in 2016 and again in 2024.
Q 08Michael Jordan won six NBA championships in the 1990s with which team?
Chicago Bulls
Chicago Bulls: Jordan led them to six titles between 1991 and 1998, yet as a high school sophomore he had famously failed to make the varsity team.
Q 09In baseball, how many strikes make a strikeout?
3
3 strikes and the batter is out, but a foul ball cannot be the third strike unless it is a bunt, so a batter can stay alive by fouling off pitch after pitch.
Q 10In American football, how many points is a touchdown worth?
6
6 points go to a touchdown, a name left over from the game's rugby roots: players once had to touch the ball to the ground to score, but now it only has to cross the goal line.
Q 11How often is the FIFA World Cup held?
Every four years
The tournament has taken place every four years since the first one in 1930, apart from 1942 and 1946 because of the Second World War.
Q 12In which country were the ancient Olympic Games held?
Greece
Greece held the ancient Games at Olympia, and before each one a truce was announced so that athletes and spectators from rival cities could travel there safely.
Q 13What is the small peg that holds a golf ball up for the first shot of each hole called?
A tee
A tee props the ball up for the opening shot; before pegs caught on, golfers had to build a little heap of sand by hand and balance the ball on top of it.
Q 21Lionel Messi is the all-time leading scorer of which Spanish club?
Barcelona
Barcelona took Messi on at 13, when his family moved across the Atlantic for the chance; he went on to score more goals for the club than anyone in its history before leaving in 2021.
Q 22Which American club did Lionel Messi join in 2023?
Inter Miami
Inter Miami is co-owned by David Beckham, who had a clause in his own 2007 playing contract that let him buy a new MLS team for 25 million dollars.
Q 23Which apparatus do female gymnasts compete on but male gymnasts do not?
Balance beam
Balance beam routines pack flips onto a strip just 10 centimetres wide, about the width of a hand, and a fall costs a whole point; men compete on rings and pommel horse instead.
Q 14Which sport is played by hitting a shuttlecock over a net?
Badminton
Badminton's shuttlecock has been smashed at 426 km/h in a match, yet its feathers create so much drag that it slows almost at once and drops steeply.
Q 15Which country does the sprinter Usain Bolt come from?
Jamaica
Jamaica: Usain Bolt grew up there as a keen cricketer, until his school coaches saw how fast he ran and steered him towards the track.
Q 16What time did Usain Bolt run in 2009 to set the 100 m world record?
9.58 seconds
9.58 seconds came from a man thought too tall to sprint: at 1.95 metres Bolt was expected to be slow out of the blocks, yet in Berlin he cut 0.11 off his own record.
Q 17Which pair of events did Usain Bolt win at three Olympic Games in a row?
100m and 200m
100m and 200m: Bolt won both at three straight Games; he also won three relay golds, but lost one of them years later when a teammate's 2008 drug sample was retested.
Q 18Which tennis player won her 23rd major singles title at the 2017 Australian Open?
Serena Williams
Serena Williams beat her older sister Venus in that final, then revealed in April that she was expecting a baby, which meant she had been pregnant throughout the tournament.
Q 19In tennis, what is the score called when a game is tied at 40-40?
Deuce
Deuce comes from an old French word for two: from 40-all, a player has to win two points in a row to take the game.
Q 20Which country did Lionel Messi captain to the 2022 World Cup title?
Argentina
Argentina had lost the 2014 final with Messi as captain; eight years later in Qatar he lifted the trophy at last, after a 3-3 draw that was settled on penalties.
Q 24Whose all-time NBA scoring record fell to LeBron James in 2023?
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record of 38,387 points had stood since 1984, the year LeBron James was born; LeBron needed 20 NBA seasons to pass it.
Q 25What was LeBron James's slot in the 2003 NBA draft, straight out of high school?
First overall pick
First overall pick: LeBron was already so famous that Sports Illustrated had put him on its cover as a high school junior and called him 'The Chosen One'; Cleveland, his home-state team, chose him.
Q 26Which word was added to the Olympic motto 'Faster, Higher, Stronger' in 2021?
Together
Together was added in 2021, after a dash: 'Faster, Higher, Stronger – Together'; the first three words were borrowed by Pierre de Coubertin from a priest friend who loved athletics.
Q 27How many players does each volleyball team have on the court at the same time?
Six
Six a side, and one of them wears a different colour: the libero, a defence specialist who stays in the back row and may not spike the ball from above the net.
Q 28How high off the ground is the rim of a basketball hoop?
10 feet
10 feet was simply the height of the balcony rail in the gym where James Naismith hung his first goals in 1891, and the game has kept it ever since.
Q 29How many innings make up a regular baseball game?
Nine
Nine innings make a full game, but the home team skips its last turn at bat if it is already ahead, and a tied game simply carries on into extra innings until someone leads.
Q 30What colour jersey does the leader of the Tour de France bicycle race wear?
Yellow
Yellow is usually said to match the yellow paper of L'Auto, the newspaper that started the Tour in 1903 to boost its sales; the jersey itself only arrived in 1919.