Pandemic Shifts (Asynchronous Session)
Sport, Disability, and a Global Pandemic: How Community Leaders Serve the Disability Population Amid COVID-19 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Cathy Mc Kay, Joshua Pate, Dr. Javier Perez, Timothy Mirabito, Carolyn Spellings, Sarah Hillyer
The 2020 outbreak of the global pandemic COVID-19 has raised concern about the health and wellbeing of vulnerable populations, especially people with disabilities (Kwok, 2020; Smith & Judd, 2020). Connectivity with the disability population at engagement points like exercise facilities have remained a concern. Fitzgerald, Stride, and Drury (2020) argued that the global lockdown in response to COVID-19 “continues to magnify the differences between non-disabled and disabled people in sport,” which “firmly situates disabled people at the margins and secondary to the core business of sport” (p. 4). The purpose of this study is to explore how community leaders use sport to serve the disability population during a global pandemic. This case study focuses on the experiences of three community leaders in Uganda, South Africa, and Senegal as they used sport to serve the disability population during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study employes contingency theory (Fiedler, 1971) in exploring the approaches of community leaders as well as DeLuca’s (2013) interdisciplinary framework for education inclusivity. Specifically, the manner in which community leaders serve people with disabilities is examined. Three participants have been recruited and agreed to participate, with data collection set for fall 2020 and data analysis to begin shortly thereafter. Semi-structured interviews will focus on the community-based sport initiatives for people with disabilities to gain an understanding of how services may have been altered due to COVID-19.
The Postponement of the Nineteenth Mediterranean Games Due to the Coronavirus Pandemic: Material and Moral Effects on Organizers and Athletes View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Nassereddine Kesri
After Algeria won to host the nineteenth edition of the Mediterranean Games for the year 2021, all financial resources were mobilized to ensure the success of organizing the Games. After the outbreak of the pandemic that plunged the world into overwhelming chaos and disrupted all humanitarian activities, major sporting events were also subject to change their dates. The Mediterranean Games were postponed to 2022 due to the change of the Olympic Games Tokyo to summer 2021. This change has had material repercussions, represented by an increase in government financial spending by the organizers and moral repercussions on the level of psychological and physical preparations of athletes, and all these imbalances pose a major challenge to the success of the Games. Through this study, we consider the implications of this situation by communicating with the Organizing Committee and the Athletes Committee to assess the level of material and moral damages that resulted from this change in timing with the presence of uncertainty controlling the thinking of all parties and imposed by the pandemic situation that plunged everyone into a state of chaos.
"For the Love of the Game": Covid-19 and Parents of Elite Hockey Players Perception of Their Mental Health View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Bryan Hogeveen
Restrictions and lockdown measures put into effect to curb the spread of the COVID-19 virus have had many unintended consequences on social life. While successful at mitigating the spread of the virus, the restrictions on social gatherings have also had negative effects in many areas of social life. One area that has experienced severe restrictions is youth sports. While researchers are currently examining the social and psychological consequences of sport restrictions on children and youth in general, less is known about how parents of elite children athletes are coping with the restrictions, and are potentially trying to innovate new strategies to circumvent the restrictions to get their child "ahead" regardless of the restrictions in place. Based on 30 qualitative interviews, this paper examines how parents of elite hockey players navigate this time and are trying to find ways for their children to still progress while being officially shut out of the arenas. We also consider how parents are perceiving the state of their children's mental health.
A Level Playing Field?: Building a Better World for Women in Sport View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Kate Yanchulis
Women are the Schrödinger's cats of the so-called major professional sports leagues in North America: They both do not exist (as athletes) and exist as lower-class citizens (as staff members, as journalists, as fans). To escape this dubious status, women instead have formed their own separate leagues, but those come with issues of their own, starting with their reinforcement of sex as binary and their existence within capitalist power structures. What does a better world for women — read: any and all women-identified people (cisgender, transgender, femme, et al.) — in sport really look like? To explore those questions, this paper analyzes news coverage of the recent struggles of the National Women’s Hockey League to hold a tournament in a pandemic “bubble,” which included a clash with controversial sports media company Barstool Sports over social media harassment as well an eventual failure to keep players safe from COVID-19 outbreaks. The framing analysis identifies the problems the league faced as well as their proposed solutions, then compares those problems and solutions to principles of feminist world building. Critical sports scholar Susan Birrell (2000) contrasts “liberal feminism” and its search for equality within the current system with “radical feminism” and its desire to upend that system (p. 62). Through news framing analysis, this paper shows that efforts to bolster women in professional sports in North America remain oriented to liberal feminist goals. This study also offers evidence of more radical possibilities on the horizon.
Expert Cricket Coaches’ Sources of Knowledge for Coaching the Fast-bowling Technique View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Harvey Anderson
This study is one part of a larger doctoral investigation into the fast-bowling technique in cricket and how expert coaches go about coaching it. Nineteen elite/expert cricket coaches from around the world, who work with elite fast bowlers were interviewed in relation to their sources of knowledge that they used to build a concept of the fast-bowling technique in cricket and the way in which they coach this technique. Following semi-structured interviews, thematic analysis was carried out (Braun & Clarke 2006) and seven first order themes and eight second-order themes were identified. Key sources of knowledge were experience, observation of expert bowlers, coach education, personal theories and experimentation, self-directed study, other professional knowledge and education, and conversations with experts from other sports. Coaches from the UK demonstrated a strong reliance of knowledge from Coach Education courses and National Governing Body (NGB) CPD opportunities; these were absent from other nations. Communities of Practice (CoP) were used on both formal and informal basis by the coaches. Coaches’ personal theory and experimentation followed (Entwistle & Petersen, 2004) work on the levels and provided a potential guide for coach learning and expertise development. The implications of the use of CoP in times of health crises (such as Covid) are further discussed as are the possible ‘blending’ of communication methods that have become more prevalent during the international lockdowns due to the Corona Virus.
Analysis of Athletic Departments' Covid-19 Decision-Making View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Timothy Harper, Jeffrey Segrave, Neil Sinclair
This paper examines decision-making in the context of multiple Covid-19 scenarios involving athletic departments at NCAA Division I, II, and III levels. We apply theories or conceptual models of decision-making (i.e., choice) which Zey (1992) posits as alternatives to rational choice models. Sample theories include Economic Rationality, Social Embeddedness, and Political Rationality. Sample scenarios include decisions made by various leagues and/or institutions to allow student-athletes to compete in NCAA competition, only practice, or postpone all athletic competitions based on an institution’s decision to go remote for the fall of 2020. The scenarios were selected based on a number of variables (i.e., level of complexity) with the ability to acquire a high quantity of objective information regarding the decision a top criterion. We also consider the number of stakeholders and the diversity of decisions in term of substance and process, and identified decisions that were representative of all NCAA divisions.
Enlightenment of STREAM Educational Concept to Innovative Training of Complex Football Talents under the Background of COVID-19 View Digital Media
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Congcong Qi, Tongfu Liang, Hanxi Li, Qingyi Teng
The COVID-19 epidemic has brought new challenges to the sustainable development of the football industry. How to train the football talents adapted to the characteristics of The Times has become an urgent problem to be solved. As an educational concept beyond the traditional, STREAM provides a new perspective for the innovative training of all kinds of talents. Based on this, this study aims to apply the framework of STREAM education concept to provide ideas and inspiration for the innovative training of football talents. Expert interview, literature review, and logical analysis are used. The STREAM education concept provides a new and innovative perspective for the education goal, discipline synthesis, discipline penetration, discipline connection and curriculum implementation of football talent cultivation. Based on the STREAM education concept, football talents in the new era under the background of COVID-19 should have rich theoretical knowledge and high practical ability of football, and be able to use interdisciplinary methods to creatively solve the problems existing in reality. This study puts forward the connotation of high-end compound football talents in the new era under the background of the COVID-19 epidemic, and tries to construct a training mode of high-end compound football talents based on STREAM education. The recommendations are as follows. (1) Establish a professional team of teachers and students. (2) School-enterprise joint training. (3) Straightening out the training mechanism. (4) Attach importance to reflection and process, and encourage innovation.
