Sport Transitions as Epiphanies
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17161/jas.v2i2.5058Keywords:
development, transition, sport systems, epiphaniesAbstract
Sport managers design development systems with the intent of retaining and advancing athletes through that system (Green, 2005). Important to this basic goal is the participant’s transition from one sport context to another. Transition research has focused primarily on elite athlete’s adaptation to career transitions as they advance at the highest levels or retire from sport (Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004). This orientation places a priority on the external transitions between sport structures before the internal, cognitive development of the athlete. This study examined the transitions of sport participants from an interpretive framework with the goal of understanding the individual’s experience of transition without it necessarily being linked to a typical external change. The sport stories of 48 students at a mid-sized, private university were collected and analyzed utilizing an interpretive paradigm. The disruption stage of these stories represents a time of crisis and transition. Denzin (2001) provided a typology for moments of crisis through four types of epiphanies: major, cumulative, illuminative, and relived. Using this typology of epiphanies can help sport managers to understand these transition events within the life of the participant. Analysis resulted in all disruptions being coded into one of the four original epiphany types. However, a large number of stories were categorized as major epiphanies. Further inductive coding yielded three sub-types of major epiphanies: major bodily, major life change, and major success. The stories within each type or subtype contained similarities in the speed of transition and the breadth of impact of the transition event. For example, stories of major bodily epiphany shared the immediate, life altering impact of significant injury while stories of cumulative shared the slow realization that the sport context had changed without the participant’s realization. Sport managers will be able to use the results of this study to understand and accommodate the pace and breadth of transition experienced by participants in their sport development systems thus maximizing the retention and advancement to the elite ranks.
References
Bowers, M., Chalip, L., & Green, B.C. (2010). United States of America. In M. Nicholson, R. Hoye, & B. Houlihan (Eds.), Participation in sport: International policy perspectives (pp. 254 - 267). New York, NY: Routledge.
Bruner, M.W., Munroe-Chandler, K.J., & Spink, K.S. (2008). Entry into elite sport: A preliminary investigation into the transition experiences of rookie athletes. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 20, 236-252.
Carpenter, G. (2003). Leisure and life perceptions of a mid-life woman experiencing: An epiphany associated with family. World Leisure Journal, 45(4), 44-54.
Chalip, L. (2006). Toward a distinctive sport management discipline. Journal of Sport Management, 20, 1-21.
Chambliss, D. (1998). The mundanity of excellence. Sociological Theory, 7, 70-86.
Cho, J. (1988). Battered Wives: Violence and Resentment in the Korean family. New York: Aldine de Gruyter.
Denzin, N. (1987). The Alcoholic Self. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Denzin, N. (1989). Interpretive Biography. Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications.
Denzin, N. (2001). Interpretive Interactionism (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
Eady, J. (1993). Practical Sports Development. London: Pitman
Edwards, A., & Skinner, J. (2009). Qualitative Research in Sport Management. Burlington, MA: Butterworth-Heinemann.
Green, B.C. (2005). Building sport programs to optimize athlete recruitment, retention, and transition: Toward a normative theory of sport development. Journal of Sport Management, 19, 233-253.
Green, M., & Oakley, B. (2001). Elite sport development systems and playing to win: Uniformity and diversity in international approaches. Leisure Studies, 20, 247-267. DOI: 10.1080/02614360110103598
Hobfoll, S. E. (1989). Conservation of resources: A new attempt at conceptualizing stress. American Psychologist, 44, 513–524.
MacPhail, A., & Kirk, D. (2006). Young people’s socialization into sport: Experiencing the specialising phase. Leisure Studies, 25(1), 57-74. DOI: 10.1080/02614360500116290
Park, S., Lavallee, D., & Tod, D. (2013). Athletes' career transition out of sport: A systematic review. International Review of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 6, 22-53.
Pearson, R.E., & Petitpas, A.J. (1990). Transitions of athletes: Developmental and preventative perspectives. Journal of Counseling & Development, 69, 7-10.
Riceour, P. (2011). Narrative identity. In D. Wood (Ed.) On Paul Riceour: Narrative and Interpretation (pp. 188-200). New York: Routledge
Riessman, C. K. (2008). Narrative Methods for the Human Sciences. Los Angeles: Sage Publications.
Schlossberg, N.K. (1981). A model for analyzing human adaptation to transition. The Counseling Psychologist, 9, 2-18. doi:10.1177/001100008100900202
Shilbury, D., Sotiriadou, K. P., & Green, B. C. (2008). Sport development. systems, policies and pathways: An introduction to the special issue. Sport Management Review, 11(3), 217-223.
Sinclair, D. A., & Orlick, T. (1993). Positive transitions from high-performance sport. The Sport Psychologist, 7, 138-150.
Stambulova, N. (2009). Talent development in sport: The perspective of career transitions. In E.Tsung-Min Hung, R. Lidor, & D. Hackfort (Eds.), Psychology of sport excellence (pp. 63-74).Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.
Stambulova, N., Franck, A., & Weibull, F. (2012). Assessment of the transition from junior-to-senior sports in Swedish athletes. International Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 10(2), 79-95.
Stambulova, N., Stephan, Y., & Japhag, U. (2007). Athletic retirement: A cross-national comparison of elite French and Swedish athletes. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 8, 101-118. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2006.05.002
Stewart, B., & Smith, A. C. (2014). The significance of critical incidents in explaining gym use amongst adult populations. Qualitative Research in Sport, Exercise & Health, 6(1), 45-61.
Thomas, A. B., Ross, M. W., & Harris, K. K. (2007). Coming out online: Interpretations of young men's stories. Sexuality Research & Social Policy: A Journal of the NSRC, 4(2), 5-17. doi:10.1525/srsp.2007.4.2.05
Toderov, T. (1977). The Poetics of Prose. Oxford: Blackwell.
Wainwright, S. P., & Turner, B. S. (2006). "Just Crumbling to Bits"? An exploration of the body, Ageing, injury and career in classical ballet dancers. Sociology, 40(2), 237-255. DOI: 10.1177/0038038506062031
Wylleman, P., & Lavallee, D. (2004). A developmental perspective on transitions faced by athletes. In M. Weiss (Ed.), Developmental sport and exercise psychology: A lifespan perspective (pp. 507–527). Morgantown, WV: Fitness Information Technology.
Wylleman, P., Alfermann, D., & Lavallee, D. (2004). Career transitions in sport: European perspectives. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 5, 7–20. doi: 10.1016/S1469– 0292(02)00049–3
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC-BY-NC-ND) License
1. License. You retain the copyright for your work. You here by grant to us a worldwide, non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, sublicensable license to:
• Reproduce, distribute and display the edited manuscript in the Journal of Amateur Sport (and other publications prepared by us or on our behalf) in any media now or hereafter known (including without limitation electronic publications such as the Internet, Google Scholar, and social media)
We do not restrict your distribution or use of the manuscript following publication in the Journal of Amateur Sport (in fact, we encourage it!). However, we have the right to publish the manuscript first on the journal website. Thus, the foregoing licenses are exclusive to us prior to our publication of the manuscript. You confirm that you have disclosed to us all previous or pending public disseminations of the manuscript, including without limitation any publications or acceptances by other journals or disseminations via websites or conference proceedings.
2. Other Confirmations. You confirm that you are the manuscripts sole author(s); you have the right to convey the foregoing licenses; the manuscript does not infringe any third party copyright, publicity/privacy right or other proprietary right; and the manuscript is not defamatory or otherwise unlawful. You shall defend and indemnify us against all claims based on any alleged breach of your confirmations in this contract.
Compensation: You will receive one (1) free copy (PDF) of the article published online in the Journal of Amateur Sport. You will receive no royalty or other monetary return from the Journal of Amateur Sport for use of the article. You do, however, have our extreme gratitude!
3. Entire Contract. This contract is the sole and exclusive agreement between the parties regarding the manuscript and supersedes all prior conversations and understandings regarding its subject matter. This contract may be modified or supplemented only by a mutually signed writing.
