One of the primary professional preparation goals in PETE is to best develop students content knowledge rooted in games and various activities. Students’ previous sports and physical activity participation experience could be helpful in learning teaching skills for successful practice. The purpose of this study was to investigate PETE students’ organized sports and physical activity participation experience from two different countries: the United States and China. One hundred and eighty two PETE students from the United States (n=86) and China (n=96) provided responses to the questions pertain to their previous involvement in sport or structured physical activity programs outside physical education class. The questionnaire was an adaptation of the Modifiable Activity Questionnaire designed to assess physical activity participation behaviors as well as the attitudes of the young adults. With the exception of a few questions that were modified to reflect cultural differences, the questionnaires were identical. Results showed that there was a significant difference (X2 (1, N=182)=63.64, p < .01) between the two groups regarding to the numbers of organized sports or physical activities participation during K-12 school years. More than 90 percent of the US students reported they involved in at least three organized sports or physical activity programs, while only 38.9 percent of the Chinese students cited three or more sports participation. Track & field (69.8%) and basketball (34.4%) are top two sports reported by the Chinese PETE students, followed by soccer (19.8%), volleyball (12.5%), Martial Art (8.3%), and Ping Pong (7.3%). For US students, the seven most frequently cited sport events were basketball (72.1%), football (66.3%), baseball (60.5%), running (including track and cross-country) (51.2%), softball (23.3%), wrestling (19.8%) and volleyball (17.4%). Findings in this study indicated that US students participated in more organized sports than Chinese students. It reflects a cultural difference regarding to the value of sports participation. In the United States, team sports, especially baseball, football, basketball, exert a strong hold on American culture. Success in sports is more important to American students (Loveless, 2001). On the contrast, academic achievement is valued more important in Chinese culture and participation in sports is often viewed as a factor that can interfere students’ academic study (Johns & Dimmock, 1999). In addition, school’s extracurricular activity opportunities, sport events popularity as well as parental support could play a role in differing the outcome of PETE students pre-college sports and physical activity participation. Keyword(s): participatory, physical activity, professional development