Playing baseball/playing ‘house’: the reproduction and naturalization of ‘separate spheres’ in Japanese high school baseball

Although Japanese schools are generally considered to be one of the most gender-equitable social institutions in Japan, they play an important role in helping to reproduce and naturalize the notion of sex-based separate spheres, through endorsing the maintenance of such separate spheres in extracurricular sports clubs, such as baseball, where female student ‘managers’ act as surrogate mothers to the male team members: cooking, cleaning and engaging in other support work. Furthermore, the Japan High School Baseball Federation (JHBF)'s rule prohibiting female teammates from participating in official games (due to the ‘danger’ of injury to smaller, weaker females) discourages more athletically capable females from joining baseball teams in the first place, so that female students who do join high school baseball teams as players tend to be less likely to be athletically competitive. This both reinforces the image of smaller, weaker females and justifies the JHBF's policy, further strengthening the notion of the appropriateness of separate spheres. Moreover, the mass media encourage this, both by applauding the efforts of the female managers, and by giving details on the physiques of female teammates, thus subtly supporting the argument that females cannot and should not compete with males in baseball (or, by implication, in other male-dominated fields). Thus, these practices help to normalize the idea of sex-based separate spheres at a very real experiential level for high school students, as well as at a symbolic/ideological level for society as a whole.     

Characteristics of an ‘effective’ tackle outcome in Six Nations rugby

Abstract

Rugby is a full contact sport that frequently comprises of tackle situations between two or more players. At present there is no research available that has quantified the defining elements that lead to ‘effective’ tackle outcomes in matches or whether they factor in the success or failure of teams. The purpose of this study was to understand the actions of the tackler during contact with the ball-carrier and relate them to the ‘effectiveness’ of the tackle outcome, during rugby match play. Matches (n=15) from the 2007 Six Nations Tournament were analysed. ‘Effective’ tackling was assessed with regards to the territorial change of the ball-carrier from the point of contact with the tackler to completion of the tackle, and characterised in terms of the tackler's body position, the angle at which the tackler approached the tackle and the outcome. The ‘less effective’ tackle is 34% more prevalent (P<0.001) than the ‘effective’ tackle during match play. Winning teams were involved in fewer tackle situations and made 3% more ‘effective’ tackles and 4% fewer ‘less effective’ tackles than losing teams. ‘Effective’ tackle outcomes were found to have a greater percentage of the player's torso leaning forward and oblique angle approaches to the ball-carrier. The difference in the frequency of upright and back foot characteristics differentiated winning from losing teams. This was the first study to describe the characteristics of an ‘effective’ tackle outcome and serves as a basis from which further research can be done on the tackle situation.     

‘They are like badges of honour’: embodied respectability and women rugby players’ experiences of their bruises

This paper considers sportswomen’s injuries through a lens attentive to discourses of women’s empowerment in sport and women’s experience of sexual violence. In-depth interviews with women rugby players in Texas and California suggest that although sportswomen consider their bruises to be a sign of their toughness, whether they experience sympathy or harassment for showing these bruises in public depends on their perceived adherence to norms of middle-class respectability. Although women rugby players are proud of their bruises, the kinds of resistance practices they engage in by showing off their injuries is complicated by their embodiment of respectability, and risks reproducing forms of social inequality by marginalizing other women.     

‘Game,Set, Match’: An exploration of congruence in Australian disability sport sponsorship

The effectiveness of sponsorship communications, and thereby the success of corporate sponsorship management, is considerably influenced by the multi-faceted, theoretical concept of congruence. In this paper, sponsors’ management approaches to disability sport relationships are presented, as well as an examination of the role congruence plays in the sponsorship process. The aim of the study was to investigate whether, and where, congruence was a consideration when examining the end-to-end sponsorship management of disability sport properties in Australia. Semi-structured interviews were used to assess congruence within each stage of the sport sponsorship management framework – strategy, objectives, selection, implementation and measurement. The various forms of congruence were found to align with past work of sponsorship in regards to congruence prominence within the management framework. A key distinguishing factor of disability sport sponsorship relationships was the emphasis placed by sponsors on mission and value congruence.     

‘Let’s work on your weaknesses’: Australian CrossFit coaching,masculinity and neoliberal framings of ‘health’ and ‘fitness’

CrossFit (CF) is one of the fastest growing exercise regimens in the world. However, sociologists have been relatively slow in examining the place of CF coaches in contemporary CF fitness culture. CF coaches are key figures in the production, promotion and consumption of CF fitness services. Therefore, coaches are a sociologically compelling group to examine. Drawing on interviews with male CF coaches in Tasmania, Australia, this paper argues that the way that CF coaches become qualified, interact with clients and understand ‘health’ and ‘fitness’ is shaped by the confluence of masculinity and neoliberalism. As CF grows in Australia alongside other fitness regimens, these findings pose a unique set of concerns for the Australian fitness industry, especially in relation to the ways that CF coaches translate the meaning and practice of ‘health’ and ‘fitness’ to their athletes.     

Developing ‘good buggers’: global implications of the influence of culture on New Zealand club rugby coaches’ beliefs and practice

Abstract

Despite recognition of how experience shapes sport coaches’ beliefs and practice empirical investigation into how this occurs is limited. This article redresses this gap in the literature by presenting the findings of a study that inquired into the influence of culture on three New Zealand rugby coaches’ beliefs and practice to identify the powerful influence of interaction between a ‘local’ traditional culture of club rugby in New Zealand shaped by the resilient ‘amateur ideal’, intensified by the perceived threat of professional rugby and the global culture of the sport industry to club rugby.     

‘You Had to Cover Nadia Comaneci’: ‘Points of Change’ in Coverage of Women’s Sport

Abstract

In the 1970s, women’s sport underwent significant change in the United States resulting in an increase of participation opportunities and funding at the interscholastic, intercollegiate, professional and international levels. Yet, media outlets continued to ignore women and, at best, portray them in gender stereotypical ways. Considering the lack of progress for women in sports media coverage, this study employs sport historian Jaime Schultz’s ‘points of change’ framework in order to identify those moments that constituted an ideological shift in the process of covering women’s sport. Drawing upon oral history interviews with journalists who wrote about women’s sport in the 1970s and 1980s, this research provides a deeper look into how journalists experienced and addressed the shifting gender ideologies of the time period. Journalists’ memories, accompanied by their articles, reveal how media practitioners negotiated meanings about femininity and athleticism in response to events that challenged deeply embedded assumptions about gender and its intersections with ethnicity, race and sexuality. This exploratory research, thus, identifies several ‘points of change’ – or points of struggle, conflict and resistance – and calls for a re-periodization of the history of women’s sports coverage.     

Transitioning from elementary to secondary school: American pupils’ scary stories and physical education folklore

The purpose of this study was to examine scary stories that young American adults recalled being told about physical education as they transferred from elementary school to secondary school. Participants were 70 undergraduate students. They were required to write about any scary stories concerning (a) secondary schooling in general, and (b) physical education in particular, that they could recall being told when they were about to move from elementary to secondary school. Standard interpretive techniques were used to analyze the data. A number of different scary story themes were identified. These themes were similar to those unearthed by British researchers, in that they were often concerned with the body, indicated that the transition to secondary school paralleled the transition to adulthood, and illustrated differences and similarities in expectations for boys and girls.     

An ‘Absence of Option’: investigating the historical limits to indigenous Australian soccer participation

In the annals of Australian soccer, Indigenous players are rare. They are hard to find in soccer’s past and they do not represent a sizeable grouping in the contemporary game. Given the contribution of Indigenous athletes to other sports, this is to be lamented. Yet, the Indigenous presence in Australian Soccer should not be underestimated. Five Aboriginal Socceroos and eight Matildas is a small but significant number. And there were periods and places in which Aboriginal participation was relatively high. The game’s future is inexorably bound with the need to understand this marginal past in order to embrace and nurture Indigenous football talent.     

Shooting motion in high school,collegiate, and professional men’s lacrosse players

The purposes of this research were to quantify the kinematics of the lacrosse shot, based on arm dominance and player experience level. Male players (N = 39; 14–30 years; high school [n = 24], collegiate [n = 9], professional [n = 6]), performed overhead shots using dominant and non-dominant sides. Motion was captured using a high-speed, 12-camera optical system and high-speed filming. Body segment rotational velocities and joint angles were determined at key points in the shot cycle from foot contact (0% of shot) to ball release (100% of shot). All players shot with less anterior trunk lean, less transverse shoulder rotation, and slower trunk-shoulder rotational velocities with the non-dominant side than the dominant side (all p < 0.05). Professional players produced crosse angular velocities 21% faster than high school or collegiate players (p < 0.05). Transverse shoulder rotation range of motion on both dominant and non-dominant and trunk rotation sides was highest in the professional players (p < 0.05). These kinematic features enable professional players to produce faster ball speeds than younger players (138 ± 7 km/h vs. 112 ± 15 km/h, respectively; p < 0.05). Less anterior lean or suboptimal rotation sequence could increase proximal shoulder forces that could contribute to injury as in other throwing sports.     

Eight-season epidemiological study of injuries in men’s international Under-20 rugby tournaments

The aim of this study was to define the incidence and nature of match injuries sustained in men’s international under-20 rugby. The study comprised an 8-season prospective study of 16 international under-20 rugby tournaments. Procedures complied with the consensus statement for epidemiological studies in rugby. Outputs included players’ mean age, stature and body mass and incidence, severity, location, type and cause of match injuries. The overall incidence of injury was 49.7 injuries/1000 player-match-hours (backs: 48.3; forwards: 50.9) with a mean severity of 32.2 days-absence (backs: 29.4; forwards: 34.4). There were no significant changes in incidence or severity of injury over the study period. Shoulder/clavicle (18.3%), head/face (16.4%), knee (13.7%) and ankle (13.7%) were the most common injury locations and ligament sprain (35.4%), haematoma/bruise (15.9%), concussion (12.5%) and muscle strain (11.2%) the most common types of injury. Being-tackled (29.2%), tackling (24.0%) and collisions (14.3%) were the most common events leading to injury. The results confirm that international under-20 rugby has a high incidence and severity of injury but the incidence is half that reported for senior international players. There was no significant change in the overall incidence of injury at the Under-20 level in the period 2008 to 2016.     

The ‘Chimera’ of Origins: Association Football in Australia before 1880

It is generally accepted that organised Association football (soccer) commenced in Australia in Sydney in 1880. This article challenges that starting point by revealing earlier games of codified soccer – not in order to establish an earlier point of origin but to challenge the very idea of origins. Recent work on football in Australia in the 1850s has begun to gather the unearthed traces of rule-bounded small-sided games brought to Australia from Britain and Ireland. Some of these were games with a strong developmental link to present day soccer in Australia. Yet the nearly disabling problem for this kind of research is that as researchers venture archivally backward in time the images become more blurred and the distinctions between codes become harder to make. Even as potential origin points become temporally closer they recede into the shadows of archival absence. The dilemma for football historians lies in the necessity of engagement with the established origins that lie at the heart of the historiography of all major sports, origins that both orient and limit debate. Present-day administrators use anniversaries of origin to generate publicity. They help to get stories rolling: ‘Once upon a time Wills or Webb Ellis or Doubleday did something so special that they got a great game started.’ Aside from often being simply incorrect, origin theses tend to nurture hegemonic narratives that by their very nature rule counter-narratives out of bounds.     

‘I just treat them all the same,really’: teachers,whiteness and (anti) racism in physical education

This paper explores physical educators’ perspectives on race and racism as a first step towards disrupting whiteness and supporting the development of antiracist practice. With close links to sport, a practice centrally implicated in the creation and maintenance of racialised bodies and hierarchies, Physical Education (PE) offers an important context for a study of whiteness and racism in education. Using collective biography we examine physical educators’ narrative stories for what they reveal about the operation of whiteness and racism in PE. Teachers draw on narratives from curricula texts which uphold and reinforce notions of the racialised other, thereby reasserting normative, universal white knowledge. Their pedagogy is underpinned by a colour blind approach where race is ‘not seen’, yet essentialist and cultural discourses of race are nevertheless deployed to position particular racialised and gendered bodies as ‘problems’ in PE. Engagement with antiracism is limited to professional rhetoric within pedagogical practice.     

Working towards inclusive physical education in a primary school: ‘some days I just don’t get it right’

Background: In Aotearoa New Zealand, as it is internationally, there is a desire to ensure physical education is inclusive of all students regardless of their abilities. Yet, medical discourses associated with disability continue to position students who are perceived as not having the capacity to participate fully in traditional physical education programmes as the teacher’s ‘helper’, ‘helped’, or ‘helpless’. As a result, these students may have negative experiences of physical education and this can impact on future involvement in movement-related activities within school and community settings.

Methodology: Drawing on the data from a larger critical participatory action research project, we explore how one primary school teacher, Joel, attempted to work more inclusively within physical education. Specifically, we draw from personal journaling, student work and records of dialogical conversations to shed light on Joel’s experiences.

Conclusion: Joel’s experience demonstrates that there is not one singular solution to inclusion within physical education and it is a combination of actions that support this process. In Joel’s case, this included becoming a reflexive practitioner, getting to know his students, being receptive as opposed to respective to difference in positive ways rather than seeing this as limiting, working imaginatively to reconsider what constitutes learning in physical education, and sharing ownership for curriculum design and learning with his students. Working in this way illustrates how a multi-layered approach can make a difference to how all the students in a class experience inclusion, including students positioned as disabled.     

Re-engaging ‘youth at risk’ of disengaging from schooling through rugby league club partnership: unpacking the pedagogic practices of the Titans Learning Centre

The youth learning re-engagement program known as the Titans Learning Centre (or TLC) is an approved alternative schooling program, developed in partnership with state education and a local National Rugby League (NRL) club, the ‘Titans’. Students typically in Grade Three or Four complete a 10 week program, interacting with professional A grade NRL players on a weekly basis during classroom learning time and lunch time ‘handball’ sessions. The project sought to understand the pedagogic practices of the TLC, using Bernstein’s social construction of pedagogic discourse, with its underlying instructional and regulative discourses, particularly the contribution by the players to what and how the students were learning. The ethical consent of recruiting children to the study was achieved via acceptance of a position in the program for classroom observations, with further consent sought for accessing students’ school performance data, student and parent surveys and interviews. Using case study methodology, Productive Pedagogies classroom audits (n?=?26) were adapted for classroom observation. Interviews with relevant program stakeholders were conducted, including players (n?=?12), NRL game development staff (n?=?1) and teachers and teacher aides (n?=?4). The findings revealed the pedagogic approaches of teachers and NRL players emphasised making regulative discourses visible to these young learners, developing supportive classroom environments and building students’ sense of connectedness to learning. The players articulated a genuine sense of contribution to the lives of the young learners and saw themselves as role models. The use of high profile athletes in youth re-engagement programs has been questioned in recent times, particularly their effectiveness in terms of student learning outcomes over time. However, we conclude that the depth of involvement in pedagogic action connected to student learning indeed enabled the NRL players to be considered role models for youth re-engagement in learning.     

‘Your Shire,Your Sharks’: The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks and Delocalization v. Glocalization in Australian Rugby League

Delocalization has become an enduring theme in sports historiography. In Australian rugby league much of the work on this theme has been associated with the so-called ‘Super League War’ and the disconnection of sporting teams from place and local identity. Not all clubs, however, suffered such a fate. The Cronulla-Sutherland Sharks are one such team that endured the travails of the 1990s and maintained a strong connection with their geographical community. Problematizing delocalization in this context, the study explores the Sharks' Super League experience and finds strong evidence to support the contention that the Sharks provide a local sporting example of ‘glocalization’.     

Sociology of a scandal: the emergence of ‘FIFAgate’

This article examines the social forces underlying FIFAgate. Why do corrupt practices, which are often highly consolidated or even institutionalized, suddenly become scandalous? What is a scandal? Why did FIFA fall into crisis in 2015 and not before? To answer these questions, it is necessary to look at the sequence of thrusts and parries between all the parties involved. Our analysis embraces the notion that social processes are based on relationships in order to provide insights into why and how denunciations can lead to long-tolerated corrupt practices suddenly becoming compromising enough to force an organization’s leaders to implement measures that would have previously been unimaginable. We use multiple sources to examine the emergence of FIFAgate and the way FIFA overcame previous critical situations, describing how FIFA neutralized earlier allegations and developed a remarkable ‘resilience’ to scandal. Finally, we analyse the successive mobilizations whose domino effect led to the emergence of FIFAgate and the measures FIFA took to contain the scandal. Our research enabled us to draw up a new theoretical model for analysing corruption scandals.