Kyle S. Bunds

Purpose: There is a growing body of literature on work experiences within the sport industry. As these experiences become better understood, it raises concerns about the ripple effects on the employee's household, particularly the impacts on their partner. Therefore, the current study seeks to further understanding of the existing work–family relationships, utilizing family systems theory and self-determination theory. Design/methodology/approach: We interviewed 25 couples where at least one partner works in college sport using a phenomenological approach to elucidate the lived experiences of the employee and partner. Findings: Findings show a wide discrepancy in the perceptions of work experiences and personal and professional sacrifices between employees and partners. Three sub-themes (partner support and sacrifice, travel and event attendance, and boundary management) illustrate how employees often viewed the personal-professional trade-offs as necessary for working in the sport industry, whereas partners felt they must sacrifice their careers, overcompensate for a lack of partner availability, and face growing isolation. Originality/value: These findings extend current understanding of family systems theory and self-determination theory by demonstrating how individuals within the family system can perceive the same situation, relationship and/or culture as vastly different. Therefore, despite the interconnectedness of the family system, individual perspectives can and may be divergent. Further, the findings illustrate partners may not be able to meet their basic psychological needs for autonomy, relatedness and competence as they prioritize the sport employee's career over their personal and professional well-being. Practical implications for individuals and their families, as well as organizations, are discussed.

Despite its well-documented physical and psychosocial benefits, sport remains the least engaged form of physical activity (PA) among adults. Many adults may lack the skills needed to play or continue to play sports and aging adults are more likely to avoid participation for fear of poor performance or injury. A sport that shows great promise for adults seeking new sports participation outlets is curling. Curling is a team sport comprised of four interchangeable positions working collectively to deliver granite stones across a sheet of ice in an effort to outscore the opponent team. While it seems reasonable that walking on ice, “throwing” a 44 lb granite stone across a sheet of ice, and periodically sweeping while walking on ice over a two-hour period would generate at least a moderate amount of physical activity, research to date is quite limited. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to objectively measure the amount and intensity of PA achieved by average recreational curling participants during a typical curling match. Methods Members of a curling club in NC were asked to wear Actigraph Accelerometers (model GT3X) while they participated in their regularly scheduled curling match. All participants had at least one year of curling experience. Curling matches lasted between 90 and 120 minutes. Participants were asked to indicate their age, gender, and curling position during the match (lead, second, vice, skip) which were matched with accelerometer data. Results Overall, 110 participants (37 female, 73 male, avg. age 50 yrs) spent most of their curling time in light or moderate-intensity activity (18.1% Sedentary; 49.5% light; 32.4% moderate; .03% vigorous). In terms of minutes, the average participant spent 35.9 minutes engaged in Moderate-to-Vigorous PA (MVPA) per curling experience. This represents 23.9% of the weekly 150min of MVPA suggested by the CDC. The second position had the highest percentage of moderate activity level and a small percentage of vigorous activity. No other position reached a vigorous level. The skip position had the highest amount of sedentary activity as well as light activity. Females had a higher level of moderate activity in comparison to males. However, males reached a small amount of vigorous activity. The age group of 18 - 36 had the highest amount of moderate activity and the lowest amount of sedentary activity. This age group reached an average of 41.0 minutes of MVPA per curling experience. The age group of > 58 had the highest amount of sedentary activity and the lowest amount of moderate activity. Conclusions Curling may be a good sports participation option for adults looking for alternatives to meet recommended weekly amounts of MVPA. Participants should consider playing in one of the first three positions to maximize the amount and intensity of PA achieved while playing. Furthermore, since curling also requires balance, coordination, muscular strength, multitasking, strategic reasoning, and can cater to most physical challenges without compromising the integrity of the game, it may be an ideal sport to promote for adults of all ages and sport abilities. Implications for Practice and Policy Findings should be used to inform strategies for promoting curling as an opportunity for team sport involvement that has the added value of contributing to daily physical activity. However, , access and opportunities to play, especially for underserved populations, are limited. Given that most curling clubs in America are private and require a membership to play. Partnership arrangements between existing clubs and public parks and recreation departments could increase both access and opportunities to play.

This chapter examines the development of the new Yankees Stadium through the lens of Yankee Stadium's community benefits agreement (CBA) and environmental justice. The chapter focuses heavily on the redistribution of public green space due to the building of the new Yankee Stadium on 22 acres of city-owned parkland adjacent to the old stadium. When in development, the Yankees and the City of New York agreed to both public financial and community benefits agreements. While the CBA did yield some positive results in terms of developing 25 acres of non-contiguous parklands, the chapter utilizes Yankee Stadium's CBA and the payment in lieu of taxes incentive programs to highlight the ways in which CBAs can be utilized for creating sport organization facilities that act as community stewards.

A growing body of research highlights the positive impacts of sport and physical activity upon the physical and mental well-being of traumatically injured military personnel. This study, conducted at the 2016 Invictus Games in Orlando, Florida, sought to understand the role of sport in the rehabilitation process of military personnel who have undergone traumatic injury or have experienced chronic illness. Data were derived from in-depth focus groups, semi-structured interviews, and open-ended questions with competitors, team managers, and family members. Findings indicated that the use of sport and physical activity has been an effective rehabilitation tool for those who competed. Tactics such as goal setting and team mentality, often critical components of both sport and military training, are helpful in allowing these competitors to reconnect with their military identity, without the negative implications of self-comparison.

I have anxiety and I am not alone, although I have felt that way. Anxiety and depression are mental health issues that impact millions of individuals in our society. While discussions about mental health are improving, insofar as conversations are more frequent particularly during the 2020 to 2021 Coronavirus pandemic, more voices are needed to tell their stories of mental health and actions need to be taken to address systemic issues in a multitude of contexts. My context is that of a tenure-track middle-class white privileged male who began an intense battle with anxiety while undertaking a guest professorship in a foreign country. The autoethnographic narrative presented here is a composition of vignettes from my struggle with anxiety in the 4th and 5th tenure track years. Throughout, I attempt to openly present my struggles and conclude by proposing ways in higher education can aid faculty, staff, and students in creating a better structure.

Sport stadia are political objects that carry an environmental cost. The purpose of this research is to add to previous literature by theorizing the political process of stadium construction in a way that accounts for how environmental issues are introduced into the political process and, therefore, offers a more accurate lens through which to interpret how sustainable stadia are constructed. We conducted a case study of SC Freiburg’s carbon-neutral stadium construction process to theorize the object-oriented politics of sport facility construction. SC Freiburg is a German football club, playing in the Bundesliga. To examine the case, we employed a key informant interview and document analysis using Nexis Uni searches, local newspaper articles, official city documents, and social media websites. The case study of SC Freiburg’s carbon neutral stadium construction process showed that environmental concerns were included through a political process that incorporated the interests of a diverse public of human and nonhuman actors (while excluding some actors whose interests could not be reconciled) to produce a sustainable matter of fact. Additionally, we propose a pragmatic definition of stadium sustainability and suggest that environmental activists should make sure that both human and nonhuman actors with sustainability concerns are included in the stadium’s material public.

In many ways, intercollegiate athletics represents the ‘sustainable’ front porch of higher education. The high-visibility, high-impact nature of elite-level college athletics make athletic departments a central player in the sustainable development journey. However, not all athletic departments respond to this responsibility, nor are all responses uniformly successful. According to national reporting frameworks, an increasing number of universities in the United States are choosing to involve their athletic departments in university-level sustainability governance structures, but the benefits and limitations of this remain unclear. Using the theory of loosely coupled systems, and more specifically, the voice of compensations (which views loose coupling as an unsatisfactory state), the purpose of this paper is to explore perceptions of athletic department engagement in shared sustainability governance, and, thus, a whole-of-institution approach. Semi-structured interviews with sustainability office personnel were conducted and analyzed, and the findings imply that shared sustainability governance has the potential to focus the attention of athletic departments toward sustainability, as well as to reaffirm shared values. Yet, to maximize the impact of athletic departments toward the sustainable development goals of a university, sustainability office personnel suggest the deployment of additional change levers, in a multi-dimensional fashion, as supplementary coupling mechanisms. These would include more rigorous sustainability goals (top-down), continued collaboration on ‘low-hanging fruit’ initiatives (lateral), student-athlete engagement (bottom-up), and the development of an internal sustainability framework (inside-out).

Research question: Charities have begun utilizing sport events as a vehicle for obtaining contributions toward a designated cause and to differentiate themselves in the charity market. Although scholarship has focused on how people attach to a charitable organization, there is a lack of research investigating religiously based international charities. Therefore, this paper examines the attachment of participants in a running event fundraiser for a North American based Christian water charity implementing clean water systems in the developing world. Research methods: Part of a larger ethnography, this study focuses upon semi-structured interviews conducted with charity fundraisers, race participants and charity organizers, before, during, and after the Miami Marathon. Interviews were audio recorded, transcribed, and coded both individually and communally by the authors. Results and Findings: Three distinct themes emerged: (1) embodied philanthropy; (2) embodied internalization of the cause; and (3) religiosity and international philanthropy. Theme three was divided into two sub-themes concerning (3a) religious systems of consumer ethics and global citizenship and (3b) participants as conduits for their religion. These themes developed as distinct responses for how individuals connect to an international cause unrelated to their everyday lives and show how a Christian water charity connects water poverty with the values of current and potential fundraisers. Implications: Findings of this study show the important role of embodied action and religiosity in philanthropy. Results contribute to the existing literature on psychological attachment within the sport management literature, while extending the field to include religiously based international charities.

Internships are a key component of sport organizations and the sport management curriculum. Due to the vastness of internships both in academia and the sport profession, it is imperative to understand the effectiveness of internships for both the organization and the intern. While previous research has focused on quality control, the agency’s perspective of internships, the student’s perspective, and how to link the theory to practice, scholars have yet to examine the effects of sport management internships on the development of essential professional skills and/or attributes. Given the political nature of obtaining and keeping a job in the sport business, the purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model that allows the effectiveness of a sport management internship to be evaluated according to its effect on the political skill of interns. Understanding the internship as one component of the sport management curricula, the conceptual model links sport management students’ developmental experiences, and internship quality to the development of political skill, and three secondary outcomes (i.e., domain-specific self-efficacy, sport industry identification, and future employment intentions). In doing so a comprehensive method for evaluating the effectiveness of internships that prioritizes the student’s growth is offered.