Humans can detect whether athletes are leading or trailing based on thin slices of athletes' nonverbal behavior, presumably because communicating and interpreting status has evolved to be highly beneficial for humans. The goal of the present research was to examine this evolutionary perspective on nonverbal behavior in sports. First, in Experiment 1 (N = 40), we investigated if leading athletes are rated higher on dimensions related to social status than are trailing athletes. Experiment 1 showed that perceivers rated leading athletes as more dominant, more proud, and more confident than trailing athletes, without being aware of the actual score. Second, we were interested in the role of head-related versus body-related information and in the role of dynamic versus static information. In Experiment 2, 120 participants watched short videos from basketball matches and rated whether athletes were leading or trailing. We occluded either athletes' faces, athletes' bodies, or showed both faces and bodies. Experiments 2 and 3 (N = 160) showed that very scarce information was sufficient for differentiating between leading and trailing athletes, even when faces or bodies were occluded. These findings are in line with ecological approaches to person perception and evolutionary accounts of nonverbal behavior.