It is now well established that children and youth who engage in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA) gain many positive health benefits (Cale & Harris, 1992). A number of scholars have argued that one obvious context in which the activity levels of young people can be increased is school physical education (e.g., McGinnis, Kanner, & DeGraw, 1991). Unfortunately, research has indicated that children and youth often spend very little time engaged in MVPA during physical education lessons (e.g., Curtner-Smith, Kerr, & Clapp, 1996). Another school context which has great potential for the promotion of physical activity is extracurricular sport. The primary purpose of this study was to determine the percentage of time in which pupils were engaged in MVPA during extracurricular sport practices. Secondary purposes were to determine the percentages of practice time allocated for pupils to engage in fitness activity or acquire fitness knowledge and in which coaches used behaviors likely to encourage pupils to participate in health-promoting activity. Participants were 20 girls' high school basketball coaches working in Alabama. One practice for each coach was videotaped during the early, middle, and late phases of a season. Practices were coded with the System for Observing Fitness Instruction Time (SOFIT). Data generated by the SOFIT coding were entered into an SPSS program to produce descriptive statistics. One-way repeated measures analysis of variance tests were then performed in order to determine whether the percentages of MVPA, fitness content, and health-promoting coach behavior changed during the course of the season. Results indicated that pupils spent 50.47% of their practice time engaged in MVPA. Moreover, 31.51% of this time was coded as being very active while 18.96% was coded as walking. Coaches, however, allocated very little time for pupils to participate in fitness activity (1.96%), or to acquire health-related fitness knowledge (2.54%). In addition, coaches spent very little time promoting (0.52%) or demonstrating (0.18%) fitness. Percentages of practice time in which pupils were engaged in MVPA and that coaches allocated for fitness content and employed health-promoting behaviors did not differ significantly during the early, middle, and late phases of the season. If these results generalize to other areas and activities, they suggest that pupils are already gaining significant health benefits from participating in extracurricular sport. In addition, they also indicate that an overhaul and expansion of the current extracurricular school sport system could lead to much greater gains.Keyword(s): coaching, physical activity, research