International Review for the Sociology of Sport

Suicide is the third leading cause of death among US adolescents aged 15-24, with males incurring higher rates of completion than females. This study used hierarchical logistic regression analysis to test whether athletic participation was associated with lower rates of suicidal ideation and behavior among a nationally representative sample of over 16,000 US public and private high school students. Net of the effects of age, race/ethnicity, parental educational attainment, and urbanicity, high school athletic participation was significantly associated with reduced odds of considering suicide among both females and males, and reduced odds of planning a suicide attempt among females only. Though the results point to favorable health outcomes for athletes, athletic participation was also associated with higher rates of injury to male athletes who actually attempted suicide.

This article provides a comparative analysis of news narratives of ‘disappointment’ in Canada and New Zealand in response to the 2000 Olympics. The theoretical framework draws on Luhmann’s distinction between cognitive and normative orientations to expectations, contingency, and disappointment. The analysis examines how disappointment was thematized similarly as a decline in relation to past performance, but explained somewhat differently in the two countries. In New Zealand, disappointment was explained in more normatively inflected terms. Although various causal factors were mentioned, the explanatory frame was dominated by claims that athletes lacked a competitive attitude and the ‘will to win’, and this was generalized to New Zealand society and the educational system in particular as indicative of a broader loss of moral values. The Canadian response, on the other hand, was framed in more cognitively oriented terms. Athlete blaming was quickly dismissed as misplaced, and attention was directed to the lack of government funding and organizational problems in the ‘sport system’ as the principal reasons for disappointing results. In both cases, however, these explanations of disappointment were not fully exclusive of one another; each continued to contain subsidiary elements of the other, which indicates how the normative and cognitive remain mutually implicated.

This study contributes to the emerging international literature on women’s soccer by exploring how South African women are negotiating material and ideological constraints to participate in the historically masculine sport of football. Special attention is given to situating athletes’ micro-level experiences within macro-level social structures, including the material legacies of colonialism and apartheid. This analysis is based on a multi-methods approach that includes interview, survey, documentary, and observational data collected during 1999 and 2000. Theoretically, this analysis draws upon various frameworks characteristic of feminist sport literatures as well as theoretical insights of Black feminists writing within and beyond Southern Africa. The findings show that a strong ethic of care within the women’s soccer community and strategies of creative resistance in the everyday lives of South African women soccer athletes are central to challenging exclusionary practices in soccer. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.

This article focuses on the experiences of Black women and one Indian Hindu woman in football in England. The discussions draw on survey and interview research to theorize gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity. The research represents a questionnaire survey of women’s teams and 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews; seven with players and seven with ‘officials’. The survey provides data on players, coaches and managers at women’s football clubs registered with the Football Association (FA) in the North of England. The questionnaire data on ‘race’, ethnicity and gender demonstrate that football’s organizational structures in the region are White and gendered. The interview data highlights the gendered and racialized experiences of women as they begin to play and continue to play football at the club level. What emerges from the interviews is how ‘racial’ difference is constituted for some women footballers. The article analyses the processes that construct gender and ‘race’ as interlocking systems of relationships by using Glenn’s (1999) theoretical framework identifying three processes through which ‘race’ and gender are mutually constituted: representation, micro-interaction and social structure. We raise both theoretical and methodological issues that indicate the need for further rigorous theorizing in the sociology of sport of women’s interwoven experiences of gender, ‘race’ and ethnicity.

A project was undertaken in 2002 on behalf of the Australian Sports Commission to identify potential indicators of health and social outcomes from sport and recreation programs in Indigenous communities in Australia. The project consisted of three stages: 1) a literature review to identify specific indicators of potential relevance in the Indigenous Australian context; 2) discussions with key members of three Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory to identify community expectations and experiences of sport and recreation programs; and 3) consultation with relevant stakeholders to determine the potential usefulness and appropriateness of the indicators identified in the first two stages. A number of indicators are proposed for immediate testing and refinement, while others are recommended for future development.

This study is a qualitative exploration of male and female African American athletes’ experiences of race and race discrimination with regard to specific incidents that occurred during their athletic careers. Eight African American athletes from different competitive levels and sports were interviewed to obtain a deeper understanding of their experiences of race and race discrimination and the role it played in their careers. The interviews revealed five themes that were identified as: ‘being hurt’, ‘outrage and shock’, ‘team togetherness’, ‘being empowered’, and ‘differences’.