George H. Sage

Becoming a High School Coach: From Playing Sports to Coaching

This paper focuses on the processes by which people become high school coaches. Occupational choice, professional socialization, and organizational socialization are examined, using qualitative data drawn from naturally occurring observations of coaches and informal discussions and in-depth interviews with them. Over 50% of the coaches had decided that they wanted to become a coach before entrance into college. The decision to become a coach was subjectively warranted by personal characteristics and experiences in sports, a devotion to sport, and a desire to work with young people. Youth sport coaching and student teaching which involved coaching constituted the only formal professional socialization that most of the coaches received. However, because almost all of the coaches participated in organized youth and/or high school athletics, they had a first-hand opportunity to observe their own coaches and acquire some informal images and impressions about the coaching occupation from them. Regardless of whether a neophyte began as an assistant or a head coach, technical aspects of the job and the occupations culture were acquired by observing and listening to more experienced coaches. Through these experiences, collective understandings began to form, and the shared meanings about the occupational culture took shape. Reality shock for most novice coaches came in the form of understanding the importance the coaching culture assigns to long hours and hard work and to the realization that coaching does take an enormous amount of time. By the end of the first season, a symbolic transformation takes place and internalization of institutional expectations occurs as the neophyte begins to understand what coaching is all about.

The Female Athlete and Role Conflict.

Abstract Male and female constitute ascribed social positions for which there is a set of role-appropriate attitudes and behaviors, and severe sanctions are imposed on those who violate those role expectations. Since athletic participation has traditionally been viewed as a male prerogative and the female participant has often faced social stigma and endangered her feminine image, it was expected that female athletes perceive and actually experience role conflict. Data were collected on 268 collegiate female athletes by the use of a 20-item questionnaire designed to assess perceived and experienced role conflict of subjects in enacting the roles of female and female athlete. Forty-four percent of the respondents reported that they perceived little or no role conflict, and 56% had experienced little or no role conflict. However, 26% of the respondents reported perceiving role conflict to a great or very great extent. Chi square analysis of perceived and experienced role conflict for the total set of subjec...

Departmental Prestige and Career Mobility Patterns of College Physical Educators.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the relationship between the prestige of physical education graduate departments where faculty obtained their doctorates and the prestige of physical education graduate departments where faculty are now employed. Based on previous research in other academic disciplines, it was expected that graduates from the most prestigious departments tend to be employed at the most prestigious institutions; that their proportion declines as the institutional prestige of the doctoral granting institution declines; and that the institutional inbreeding of doctoral graduates in physical education will be the highest among the most prestigious institutions. Subjects (N = 795) were regular resident faculty with earned doctorates who were employed at any one of the 58 highest physical education doctoral degree producing institutions. A multiple regression analysis revealed a significant relationship (.01) between prestige of doctoral granting department and prestige of emp...

Stealing Home: Political, Economic, and Media Power and a Publicly-Funded Baseball Stadium in Denver:

In 1990, the Major League Baseball owners announced that the National League would add two new franchises in 1993. Two issues immediately confronted the various groups attempting to secure a baseball franchise for Denver. One was finding an owner for the franchise, the other was providing a stadium for the team. This study focuses on the events and social processes involved in the baseball stadium issue in Denvers bid to secure a major league baseball franchise. The taxpayers of metropolitan Denver were asked to vote on a sales tax initiative that would finance the construction and operation of a new baseball stadium ifaMajorLeagueBaseballfranchisewasultimatelyawardedtoDenver. This study centers on how various forms of power were used to persuade taxpayers that they should pay the costs of constructing a baseball stadium and how the same forms of power were later used to obtain a stadium lease agreement. Other issues addressed by this study include why citizens were not more active in questioning either the public expen diture of money for the construction of a stadium or the terms of the stadium lease agreement. Analyses and explanations for these questions are grounded in the dynamics of power as it was employed by the various entities whose interest was in securing a Major League Baseball franchise for Denver.

Pursuit of Knowledge in Sociology of Sport: Issues and Prospects

Early linkages between physical education, sociology, and sport sociology are set in the American 1960s context of increased focus on the discipline of physical education, expansion of higher education, and fragmentation of knowledge. In the last 20 years sport sociology has become a subfield of both physical education and sociology. Positivist and descriptive/sensitizing perspectives of the nature of knowledge—two paradigms used by sport sociologists—are compared and contrasted. In sociology there continues to be considerable debate between proponents of these two orientations, while in physical education the positivist tradition has been espoused almost exclusively. Much American social research is positivist in nature, and this, coupled with the strong physical education positivist tradition, has tended to guide sport sociologists in this direction. But interdisciplinary sport studies perspectives that have evolved out of the descriptive/sensitizing paradigm and draw on a wide range of the social scien...

Sociology of Physical Educator/Coaches: Personal Attributes Controversy

Abstract In the first article, John W. Loy discusses the identification of sport sociology as an academic specialty and describes its stages of development. Loy identifies problems confronting future developments in sport sociology, in particular critical mass, academic status, and ideological orientation, both in physical education and in sociology. This analysis is followed by a sociological analysis of sports occupations, by George H. Sage. Sage discusses the personal attributes of physical educators and coaches, focusing on personality characteristics, leadership styles, attitudes, and value orientations. The paper is concluded with an attempt to resolve the controversy between the stereotype of physical educator/coach in the popular literature and the findings from empirical research.

Sport and the Social Sciences

Sport is one of the most ubiquitous activities of modern contemporary society. The pervasiveness of sport can be seen by the enormous amount of primary and second ary involvement in it by people of all ages and social strata. Sport penetrates into and plays a significant role in all of the social institutions. The functions of play, games, and sport is a major theme running through much of the work of social scientists. Although there is no definitive list, there are seven major categories of functions of play, games, and sport: in stinct, developmental-cognitive, mastery, social integration, socialization, social control, and personal-expressive. There is a substantial body of literature in the social sciences dis cussing the importance of each of these functions.

The effects of induced arousal on learning and performance of a pursuit motor skill.

Abstract To examine the effects of induced-arousal on learning and performance of a motor skill, 42 subjects were administered practice on a pursuit rotor task over 2 days. Fifteen trials were given on Day 1 and 10 trials were administered 24 hr. later. Subjects were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: related arousal, unrelated arousal, or control. Arousal was enhanced by administering electric shock during trials 6-15 on Day 1. Subjects in the related arousal group received shock if their performance did not reach an established criterion, whereas subjects in the unrelated arousal group received shock on a random schedule regardless of their performance. The control group received no shock. To determine if the induced-arousal was anxiety evoking, the A-State form of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory was administered. Analysis of the results indicated that electric shock administration significantly enhanced arousal of the related arousal group over the control group but not the unrelated arous...

Resurrecting Thirty Years of Historical Insight About Kinesiology: A Supplement to “What is Kinesiology? Historical and Philosophical Insights”

Twietmeyer (2012) reviews the historical and contemporary state of kinesiology and appraises what he calls unexamined philosophical commitments. He begins with a historical and philosophical review of the foundations of kinesiology, beginning with Aristotles ancient influences and Polanyis and C. P. Snows modern influences. He then focuses on Sputniks and James Conants influences on higher education in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and on Franklin Henrys (1964) claim for physical education in higher education as an academic discipline. Twietmeyer then asserts that three articles published by Karl Newell in Quest in 1990 “led to the widespread adoption of the name ‘kinesiology’” (p. 16). But Twietmeyer completely skips nearly 30 years––from the early1960s to 1990—of historical insights about kinesiology. These happen to be the most significant three decades in the development of kinesiology as a recognized academic discipline. To remedy Twietmeyers omission, I undertake a brief resurrection of thirty years of historical insight about kinesiology in higher education.

Progressive speed practice in learning a continuous motor skill.

Abstract The purpose of this study was to determine the effects of progressive and gradually increasing speed practice on motor skill acquisition using the pursuit rotor. Subjects in the three treatment groups were given 2 days of practice at gradually increasing speeds while the control group practiced at the criterion speed. On the third day all groups performed 12 transfer trials at the criterion speed. Randomized ANOVA and Treatment X Subjects analysis were computed on the last nine transfer trials. No significant differences were observed among the groups for any of the transfer trials. There was no significant improvement in performance within groups during transfer trials. These findings suggest that the appropriate spatial and temporal organization necessary to perform a continuous motor task can be acquired as efficiently through a gradual and progressive increase in speed as through a program of constant practice at the criterion speed.