Contents:
Introduction 3
1. SPORT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE USA 4
1.1. Historical background, names ofnational sports, borrowed games 4
1.2. Problems and prospects of Americansport 6
2. THE VARIETY OF AMERICAN SPORTS 9
2.1. Professional sport 9
2.1.1. Thebusiness of sport 9
2.1.2. Majorsports 10
2.1.2.1. Baseball and business 10
2.1.2.2. Basketball 12
2.1.2.3. Football: an American spectacle 13
2.1.2.4. Bowling 15
2.1.3. Problemsin professional sport 16
2.1.4. OlympicGames and the names of American heroes 17
2.2. Leisure sports 17
2.2.1. Badminton 17
2.2.2. Bowling 20
2.3. Sports for the disabled 21
2.4. Women in sports 22
2.4.1. Womenand traditional sports and games 23
2.4.2. Women’ssport in the 19th century 24
2.4.3. Challenginggendered boundaries 25
2.4.4. The ageof modern sports 26
3. RECREATION IN THE USA 29
3.1. Sports at colleges 30
3.1.1. Collegeand sport 30
3.1.2. Sportand money 31
3.1.3. Women'sCollegiate Sport 32
3.1.4. Intramuraland club sports 32
3.2. Animals in sport 32
3.3. Unusual sports 33
3.4. Camps 33
CONCLUSION 35
LITERATURE 36
INTRODUCTION
Nowadays a lot ofpeople are getting more and more ambitious and now the always hurry somewhere,they are eager to do everything and are afraid of losing any minute that canbring them happiness, joy, glory or just money. But if they want to get thatall, they’d better have wonderful mood all the time, perfect health, steelnerves and strong will. At present sport is the very thing that can help anyperson either keep fit or reach all his aims.
In my course paperI’m going to investigate almost all kinds of sport that can be popular famousin the USA, both professional and amateur ones.
Thereprobably are countries where the people are as crazy about sports as they arein America, but I doubt that there is any place where the meaning and design ofthe country is so evident in its games. In many odd ways, America is itssports. The free market is an analog of on-the-field competition, apparentlywild and woolly yet contained by rules, dependent on the individual'sinitiative within a corporate (team) structure, at once open and governed.
Sport plays a major role in American society as itaccounts for the most popular form of recreation. Many Americans are involvedin sports — either as a participant or as a spectator. Amateur sportsdistinguish between recreational and competitive sports. Favorite recreationalactivities include hiking, walking, boating, hunting, and fishing. All of theseare liked for the recreational value as well as for exercise. But there arealso many other sports activities in America which attract millions ofparticipants for personal enjoyment, the love of competition and for thebenefits of fitness and health. In addition, sport teaches social values liketeamwork, sportsmanship, self-discipline, and persistence that are highly regardedin U.S. society.
So the main tasks of my course paper are to learnhow sport influences on health and culture of the Americans, to find out allproblems and prosperities of American sport and to figure out how many peopleof various classes, ages, nationalities and races, which live in the USA, areinvolved in playing games.
The first chapter of this course paper contains theinformation that shows us the stages of gradual development of American sport,beginning from Puritans’ times till our days. Different kinds of problems andprosperities that very often can appear in sport are also discussed here. Inthe second chapter any can find the information about great variety of sportsthat are played and watched on TV through the whole USA. Here I also give somedata about participating women and the disabled in contests and competitions.The third chapter tells us about sport as about the main sourse for recreation.
So the whole course paper is dedicated to the sportin the USA, its development and influence on American life.
1. SPORT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE USA
1.1. Historical background, names of national sports, borrowedgames
Whateverelse sports may mean or be, their present-day prosperity represents arepudiation of the hostility toward games and enjoyment codified in the lawbooks of the first settlers. The colonies' early rulers, north and south, werededicated to rooting out play and enforcing the discipline of hard work as amoral value in itself and as a frontier necessity. The Puritans' war againstsports may be traced to their equation of work with prayer and their beliefthat divine election was accompanied by an easy rejection of idleness; as membersof England's rising middle class, the Puritans also had a social bias againstthe traditional amusements of the aristocracy. Today's fascination with themoral significance of winning, with the accompanying neglect of the playelement in sports, may be an atavistic survival of this Puritanoutlook—although the win-at-any-cost ethic is no less in evidence in countrieswith no Puritan heritage. Then again, the sheer number of seventeenth centurylaws against sports must also mean that games were very popular in colonial.America.
Throughoutthe colonies the old English sports like wrestling and footraces seem to havebeen present, although cockfighting and horse racing were not permitted in NewEngland. Sledding and ice skating were also popular where the climatepermitted; ice skating remained one form of physical exercise allowed womenwhen the mores of the Victorian era later began to exclude them from sport.
Thenineteenth-century class revolution that changed the rank of gentleman from oneof ascription to achievement had a pernicious effect on participation insports. An eighteenth-century gentleman (or lady) could hardly have lost hisstatus by anything short of a major crime, but the kind of gentility that wasthe goal of social climbing in the second quarter of the nineteenth centurywas as easily lost as gained, particularly by women. The determination of thenew middle classes to separate themselves from the vulgar meant avoidinganything that had the appearance of physical work, which was enough to rule outstrenuous play.
Itis not true that there was no American participation in sports during the 1840sand 1850s; these were the years when a primitive form of baseball was evolving.However, these decades were more notable for the rise of spectator sports—earlyevidence of tastes that would eventually be satisfied by the television sportsbroadcasts of today. The most popular spectator sport was horse racing, andwhole sections, sometimes the whole country, followed rivalries between famousstable owners.
Sailingregattas were another way social leaders could exhibit themselves before themasses in a pastime whose expense insured its exclusivity. There wereprofessional races staged by gamblers for cash purses, but most were sponsoredby elite rowing and sailing clubs. The first America's Cup race in 1851, andthe intense interest it aroused, gave the rich an opportunity to holdthemselves up as defenders of national pride in an arena none but they couldafford to enter.
Asthe nineteenth century progressed, sports seemed to evolve along two divergingpaths. On the one hand, sports suitable for general participation tended to bemonopolized by elite groups who excluded the working class and immigrants. Onthe other hand, sports with an in-eradicable working class (and hence professional)character tended to be taken over by commercial interests and run asmoney-making enterprises. Track exemplifies the first tendency, baseball the second.
Professionaltrack and field, or «pedestrianism,» was one of the most popularsports of the nineteenth century, both as recreation and spectacle. Before theCivil War races tended to be promoted by gamblers and often pitted Englishchampions against American favorites; the races were commonly held at horserace tracks or on city streets. In 1844 some thirty thousand spectators watchedthe American runner John Gilder-sleeve beat the Englishman John Barlow in a tenmile run for $1,000 at a Hoboken race track. Forty thousand watched therematch, which Barlow won with a time of 54:21.
Afterthe Civil War track was particularly popular as an opportunity for wagering,with the competitors often handicapped with weights or staggered starts toensure parity. Amusement parks sponsored weekend track meets on an eliminationbasis with the winners receiving cash awards or readily pawnable trophies. Marathonsand long distance races were also popular.
Probablythe most important sponsors of track and field sports in the nineteenth centurywere the ethnic organizations with their annual «picnics»—massathletic meets allowing amateurs and professionals to compete separately andagainst each other. The Caledonian Games of New York City were the earliest;during the 1880s there were also Irish and German picnics. Picnics were alsohosted by military regiments, labor unions, colleges, and wealthy athleticassociations like the New York Athletic Club and the Schuylkill Navy Club ofPhiladelphia.
Inthe 1870s the «gentlemen» began to complain about having to competeagainst lower class professionals at track meets. The solution to this genteeldilemma was the doctrine of amateurism, which made it possible for thewell-born to win more than an occasional race and, incidentally, made athleticsrespectable since social contact with workmen was infra dig. In 1888 today'sruling amateur sports organization, the Amateur Athletic Union, was formed,which by strictly enforcing the rules of amateurism effectively banishedworking-class participation from track and field. Not until the 1970s wouldthese rules be relaxed enough to allow athletes without private means ofsupport to compete.
Theprofessional champions of the «pedestrian» era set records that stillastound. In 1885 a professional runner set a mile record of 4:12.4, a mark noamateur could match until 1915. The most amazing professional track record wasset by the outstanding pedestrian Richard Perry Williams, who ran a carefullyauthenticated 9 second 100 yard dash on June 2, 1906. It took nearly seventyyears for an amateur to equal that achievement.
Astrack evolved into an upper-class preserve, baseball grew from similarbeginnings into the earliest, and still the most complete, form of popularsports culture [3,p.207-209].
In1911, the American writer Ambrose Bierce defined Monday as “in Christiancountries, the day after the baseball game”. Times have changed and countries,too. In the U.S. of today, football is the most popular spectator sport. Baseball is now in second place among the sports people most like to watch. InJapan, it is the most popular. Both baseball and football are, of course,American developments of sports played in England. But baseball does not comefrom cricket, as many people think. Baseball comes from baseball. As early as1700, an English churchman in Kent complained of baseball being played on Sundays.And illustrations of the time make it clear that this baseball was the baseballnow called “the American game”. Baseball is still very popular in the USA as aninformal, neighborhood sport. More than one American remembers the time whenshe or he hit a baseball through a neighbor’s window.
Baseballand football have the reputation of being “typically American” team sports.This is ironic because the two most popular participant sports in the worldtoday are indeed American in origin-basketball and volleyball. The first basketballgame was played in Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1891. It was invented at aYMCA there as a game that would fill the empty period between the football season(autumn) and the baseball season (spring and summer). Volleyball was also firstplayed in Massachusetts, and also at a YMCA, this one in Holyoke, in 1895.During the First and Second World Wars, American soldiers took volleyball withthem overseas and helped to make it popular. Today, of course, both basketballand volleyball are played everywhere by men and women of all ages. They are especiallypopular as school sports [1, p.138-139].
1.2. Problems and prospects of American sport
The single largest problem in the conduct ofAmerican sports is the obsession with winning that is found at almost alllevels of competition. Already at age twelve or thirteen youngsters are oftenexposed to grueling training regiments. Sometimes dirty tactics are evenintroduced at this age by coaches who are too eager to win. In some casesparents who appear to be living out fantasies of success in sports throughtheir children contribute to the tremendous pressure of sporting competition atan early age. Baseball for children ages 9-12, called Little League baseball,and its football counterpart have often been criticized for their prematurestress on winning at all cost. Football, with its violent contact, would appearto be a particularly dangerous game for youngsters whose bone structure has notfully developed. Competition at an early age is not bad in itself as long as ahealthy spirit of fun and recreation is maintained.
Another trend in contemporary American sports partlyrelated to the obsession with winning is over specialization. While this overspecialization helps to produce the remarkable feats of modem gymnasts,basketball players, and others, it nevertheless discourages some from tryingout a wide variety of sports.
A particularly American phenomenon connected withsport is what might be called the cult of the coach. All sorts of legends andromantic tales have grown up around certain well-known coaches, and sometimestheir coaching philosophy has entered folk wisdom. It may be that this cult ofthe coach is made possible partly by the fact that Americans are accustomed tohaving strong managers in the world of business. In any event, sports in the USare typically closely controlled and managed by their coaches, perhaps more sothan in other parts of the world. This is reflected in the numerous timeoutsand other stoppages of play characteristic of American football, basketball,and baseball. The increase in the number of timeouts that has come about inrecent years in professional sport is of course also designed to allow moretime for advertisements. At the amateur level, too many interruptions forcoaching instruction may even have the result of discouraging individualinitiative, something many Americans prize above all.
If American sport has certain problems, it also hasmany positive features. Perhaps the greatest achievement of American sport isthat over the years it has attracted more and more people of all types andbackgrounds. Participation by minorities and women is constantly increasing.There are certain sports, such as football and basketball, where black athletesnow dominate. As in the rest of society, all problems associated with racerelations are far from having been solved. For example, minorities are greatlyunder represented in the management of American sport. And, many privateclubs, particularly golf clubs, continue to discriminate against minorities.Nevertheless, other areas of society would do well to match the example ofsport in making opportunities for minority participation available.
Another positive feature of modern sport and physicalculture in the US is that people are constantly inventing new sports and gamesand reshaping old ones to suit their needs and desires. At the same time, aspeople become better educated about physical fitness, they are more willing totry new recreational physical activity later in life. Progress in technologyhas also helped the spread of certain sports. Artificial snow-making devicesare used at virtually all ski resorts throughout the country and have madepossible skiing as far south as Georgia. Air conditioning and refrigerationhave made it possible to construct skating rinks in all parts of the country sothat figure skating and hockey are now found in Florida and California, wherethere are now both amateur and professional hockey teams.
How will sport in the US develop in the future?There should be increased opportunity for diverse groups of people toparticipate in an ever wider range of sporting activities. Sports such as golfand tennis, which have not been known for widespread minority participation,will probably experience a gradual increase in the number of blacks and otherminorities. Sport has traditionally been one of the most visible paths ofadvancement for minorities and newly arrived immigrants in the US. Perhaps,however, in the future expectations about prospects for raising one's standardof living through spoil will become more realistic as people begin tounderstand that professional athletes comprise only a tiny fraction of thepopulation.
On the other hand, watching professional sports willbecome more and more an activity for the social elite as costs and ticketprices increase. Although professional sport in the US has defied ups and downsin the economy, eventually it may be forced to take on a more modest profile.If that ever happens, teams may adopt new structures, such as community ratherthan corporate (business) ownership. In the short run, however, it seems thatprofessional sport will only become more and more expensive.
Eventually the American spirit of innovation mayreach the schools and infuse their physical education programs with theimagination they are sometimes lacking. The phenomenon of women playing onotherwise all male teams has existed for some time and could become more commonin future. For the most part, however, women's sport will continue to grow onits own. Because they are such dynamic social phenomena, sport and physicalculture in the US will not simply continue to reflect trends in the widersociety but will sometimes lead the way on the path toward change [5, p.2-5].
Fromthis chapter we’ve learned that sports in North America go back to the NativeAmericans, who played forms of lacrosse and field hockey. During colonialtimes, early Dutch settlers bowled on New York City's Bowling Green, still asmall park in southern Manhattan. However, organized sports competitions andlocal participatory sports on a substantial scale go back only to the late 19thcentury. Schools and colleges began to encourage athletics as part of abalanced program emphasizing physical as well as mental vigor, and churchesbegan to loosen strictures against leisure and physical pleasures. As workbecame more mechanized, more clerical, and less physical during the late 19thcentury, Americans became concerned with diet and exercise. With sedentaryurban activities replacing rural life, Americans used sports and outdoorrelaxation to balance lives that had become hurried and confined. Biking,tennis, and golf became popular for those who could afford them, while sandlotbaseball and an early version of basketball became popular city activities. Atthe end of the 20th century, Americans were taking part in individual sports ofall kinds—jogging, bicycling, swimming, skiing, rock climbing, playing tennis,as well as more unusual sports such as bungee jumping, hang gliding, and windsurfing.
Duringthe whole history of the USA sport there was developing more and more.Itattracted and even now attracts great numbers of the Americans of differentages, sexes and nationalities.As we can see, sport helps to prevent Americanteenagers from different pernicious habits and actions, to involve them insocial work.Thanks to sport many people don’t suffer from various illneses anddeseases. But althouth all that sounds so pleasant and encouraging, Americansport has its disadvantages. Almoust all Americans believe that the impossibleis possible. So they always try to reach the top by all means and very often itleads to irretrievable consequences that may change the life not only of oneperson but the whole country.
2. HE VARIETY OF AMERICAN SPORTS
2.1. Professional sport
2.1.1. The business of Sport
Professional sports in the US comprise one of thelargest business enterprises in the country. Hundreds of millions of dollarsare spent every year on everything from tickets to television contracts andplayers' salaries. The most popular team sports are football, basketball, andbaseball. In recent years hockey has been increasing in popularity and somebelieve that if the National Hockey League (NHL) can rid itself of unnecessaryfighting it will begin to challenge the other three in terms of spectatorinterest. The other great world team sport, soccer, has had a difficult time ingaining a foothold. After a brief burst of success in the 1970s, professionalsoccer in the US has assumed a minor status in relation to the other majorsports.
Golf and tennis are the most popular individualprofessional sports. Businesses that aspire to national and internationalrecognition are willing to spend tens of millions of dollars per year onsponsoring golf and tennis in order to have their names associated with thesesports. It should be pointed out that only a few players at the top are able toachieve real wealth and fame and that many of the lesser players struggle hardto make ends meet.
Boxing is a sport that has become increasinglycontroversial over the years as its dangers have become more and more apparent.It is particularly disturbing to see one of the sport's greatest personalities,former heavy weight champion Muhammad Ali, struggle with the brain damage hehas suffered from taking too many blows to the head. Nevertheless, the attractionof the sport appears to be irresistible to some, and efforts to make boxingsafer or even to eliminate it altogether, have proven fruitless.
Although the sports mentioned above receive the mostattention from the news media, other sports such as car racing and horse racingare tremendously popular in the US. Motor sports are a whole world of theirown. They include racing on oval tracks, both by stock cars, that is, carsdriven on highways, and special Indy cars (named for the famous Indianapolis Speedway),sports car competitions, and quarter mile sprints called drag races. Inaddition, there is all sorts of racing for motor cycles over dirt tracks, pavedtracks, and obstacle courses with jumps. Just as in other sports, fans havetheir favorite drivers in motor sports who sometimes take on the status of folkheroes. The race car driver Richard Petty, who has recently retired is a goodexample of this.
Most people are not aware that the sport with thelargest number of spectators in the US is horse racing. This is largely becauseit is possible to gamble on horse races and there are so many different racingfixtures throughout the country. Other sports which are based on betting areharness racing, greyhound dog racing, and jai alai. Jai alai, pronounced«hi li,» is a fast moving game from the Basque country of Spain thatinvolves throwing a ball with a special basket called a cesta against a wall.
One particularly American, and also Canadian, formof sport is the rodeo. Calf roping, bronco riding, and bull riding are justsome of the best known rodeo events. As you might expect, rodeos are mostpopular in the western states and the western provinces of Canada. The CalgaryStampede, held every year in the Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta, is theworld's most famous rodeo.
There are also several sports that are out of themain stream but nevertheless have numerous followers. These include rollerderby, in which roller skaters try to push each other off of a track, andprofessional wrestling, which features pre-rehearsed moves and a lot ofprimitive play acting. Many feel that these two are not really legitimatesports and call them, together with events such as racing cars through the mud,«junk sports.»[2, p.305-307]
2.1.2. Major sports
2.1.2.1. Baseball
The roots of the national pastime, or«game» (never the national «sport»), may certainly betraced to the English children's game of rounders —which was also known asearly as 1744 by the name of «baseball,» despite A. G. Spalding's effortin 1908 to concoct a myth of purely American origins. Under the name of«town ball» the game was popular throughout the colonies, andabsorbed enough of students' time for it to be banned at Princeton in 1787.There was a Rochester Baseball Club in 1820s, and the elder Oliver WendellHolmes said that he had played the game at Harvard in 1829.
Until the Civil War there were really two distinctlydifferent variants of the game. Throughout New England there was the«Boston» game, while the rest of the country played the «NewYork» game. The critical difference was that the Boston game permitted abase runner to be retired by throwing the ball at him, a practice called«soaking» the runner.
The first baseball clubs of the 1840s and early1850s were gentlemanly in membership and decorum. Games betweenstatus-conscious clubs like the New York Knickerbockers and Brooklyn Excelsiorswere friendly preludes to formal dinners with musical entertainment furnishedby the host club. These social teams were soon displaced by workingmen's clubs,with memberships drawn from labor organizations, from city government services(the police or the sanitation departments), or sponsored by political machinesas part of their election strategy. The most successful and longest-lived teamstended to be ones with political support. Political parties could providegovernment sinecures for the players, allocations for building enclosedstadiums, and permission to play Sunday ball. The popularity of Sunday ball(and the ownership of many teams in the American Association bv brewers) madethe game a prime target for militant Protestant reformers. The battle overSunday baseball was one of the most lively survivals of the Sabbatarianmovement into the latter part of the century.
The less violent character of the New York game (no«soaking») made it more appropriate for play in urban centers betweenteams that had neighborly reasons for restraining their killer instincts. In1858 the National Association of Baseball Clubs was formed with a nucleus ofsixteen New York area teams. In 1868 Cincinnati organized the firstsemi-professional team; it was there also that the first unashamedlyprofessional team was born in 1869, today's Cincinnati Reds.
Full-fledged professional teams first appeared inthe Midwest, founded by local boosters eager to publicize their city and todemonstrate its vitality. The Cincinnati Red Stockings of 1869 were financed bythe sale of stock in the team corporation; likewise the Chicago White Sox in1870. In 1870 the National Association of Amateur Baseball Players tried toexpel the Cincinnati and Chicago professionals, and soon afterwards, in March1871, the professional clubs met and established the National Association of ProfessionalBaseball Players [6, p.2-4].
Organized baseball as we know it today dates from asecret meeting of the owners of the investor-owned teams in 1876. The NationalAssociation had been torn by discord between corporately owned teams like theWhite Sox and the Reds, and poorer teams that were essentially player-runcooperatives. The owners of the richer teams were determined to rationalize thebusiness and to combat the public perception of professional ballplayers aswilling accomplices of gamblers in betting coups (known then as «hippodroming»).Led by baseball's first robber baron, William Hulbert of the Chicago White Sox,the owners decided to declare war on the player-owned cooperative clubs. Theowners specifically restricted membership in their new National League to clubsthat had clarified the role of players as employees. This league, which was thenucleus of today's major leagues, began with clubs in Philadelphia, Hartford,Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, Louisville, St. Louis, and New York. It had tostruggle against rival leagues for the next thirty-nine years, vanquishing some(the Players' League and the Federal League) and merging with others (theAmerican Association in 1891 and the Western, later American, League in 1903).
The first few years of the new league wereprecarious ones, with cutthroat competition between the National League and itsrivals. On September 29, 1879, the National League owners met and decided onthe strategy that eventually was their salvation, the reserve clause, acontract provision that gave a player's club the right to «reserve»his services for the next season. In effect it transformed a yearly contractinto a lifetime indenture. Until 1883 only the top five players on each teamwere protected by the reserve clause, but these were precisely the playerswhose salaries were the greatest burden to the owners. As the clubs reservedmore and more players, finally covering the entire roster, the players foundthat their salaries were declining and their working conditions worsening, andso in 1885 John Montgomery Ward, a standout shortstop for the Giants and latera lawyer, organized the Brotherhood of Professional Baseball Players.
Still not satisfied, the owners drew up a playerclassification system in 1888 to stabilize and reduce salaries according to astandardized evaluation of a player's relative ability (something like today'sfree agent compensation pool). Ward was in Egypt on baseball's famousround-the-world tour when he found out about this. He immediately abandoned thetour and, together with most of the other National League stars, declared waron the owners by organizing their own «Players' League.» Ward managedto enlist the support of almost all the star players and most of the sportingpress, and he and the ball players spent the winter of 1889-90 promoting thenew league in union halls, saloons, and wherever fans could be found.
The 1890 season was really a war between theNational League, led by A. G. Spalding, and Ward's Players' League. At the endof the season the Players' League had surpassed the National League inattendance, but the total attendance had been spread too thin for anybody tomake much money. The players also made some grievous mistakes. They spurned anappeal to join the American Federation of Labor and they refused to play Sundayball, which was clearly suicidal. Worst of all, they placed too much power inthe hands of their financial backers, relying on the investors to be fair totheir ballplayer partners.
At the end of the season all the Players' Leagueteams had shown a profit, while most of the National League teams were on theverge of bankruptcy. It seemed as though the players had won. But when theNational League offered to meet with representatives of the AmericanAssociation (a rival league organized on the usual investor-controlled basis)and a committee representing the Players' League capitalists, the money men metand sold the players out. They merged the three leagues in a way that left theinvestors firmly in control. This merger resulted (after dropping some weakerteams) in a twelve-team alignment: Baltimore, Washington, Cleveland, andLouisville (all of which eventually folded); Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago,Cincinnati, New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and St. Louis. In 1892, withthe National League's monopoly once again secure, the most hated features ofthe reserve clause were reinstated and salaries again were slashed. The playershad lost all control over their game, and they would not regain it until thereserve clause was finally thrown out in 1975. This clause, although grosslyunfair to the players, undoubtedly contributed to the growing popularity of thegame by ensuring the stability of the team rosters and by casting the playersin roles with which blue collar fans could identify.
The 1890s also saw another development that probablyhelped ensure the popularity of baseball. That was the enforcement of Jim Crow,which turned every major league baseball game into a ritual demonstration thatAmerica was a white man's country. During the 1890s blacks had to organizetheir own teams, and eventually a two-league system emerged, with a NegroNational League in 1920, and a Negro Eastern League in 1921, both of whichcollapsed during the early Depression. A second Negro National League appearedin the late 1930s, and a Negro American League in 1936. Both leagues died in1952 when black stars in large numbers began to be signed to major and minorleague contracts after Jackie Robinson's pioneering year with the BrooklynDodgers in 1947.
The National League's 1903 merger with the Western(American) League created a structure of two eight-team leagues and a WorldSeries (also dating from 1903). This arrangement remained intact until 1953,when the Boston Braves moved to Milwaukee.
The years after World War I saw baseball mature intoAmerica's premier sports culture with a full array of mythic underpinnings: animmaculate conception (the Cooperstown legend of Abner Doubleday's invention ofthe game), a myth of the fall (the fixed 1919 World Series), an Odysseus (ТуCobb), an Achilles (Babe Ruth), a Zeus (Judge Landis), an aristocracy (theYankees), and a rabble (the Dodgers). More than any other American sport,baseball lends itself to legend. The statistical records give each game amythic dimension as the hits, runs, errors, and strikeouts are melded into therecord books. The mythic power of the game, however, also takes its toll, aseven on the lowest level parents and coaches try to ride the miniature exploitsof their midget performers into the realm of sports fantasy [3, p.209-210].
2.1.2.2. Basketball
The evolution of basketball exhibits a morecomplicated mixture of elite uplift and ethnic aspiration. Basketball startedas part of the nineteenth-century crusade to Americanize (or Christianize) theimmigrants; it was quickly taken over by those targets for genteel uplift as away ethnics could express their national pride and compete with otherimmigrants.
Basketball was invented in 1891 at the YMCA'sleadership training institute in Springfield, Massachusetts. One of thephysical instructors at the institute, James Naismith, developed rules for whathe called «A New Sport»: tossing a soccer ball into a backboardlesspeach basket. Naismith evidently intended that the ball be moved only bypassing, but players soon discovered other ways to advance the ball withoutcarrying it. At first they juggled the ball overhead (volleyball style) as theyran, but when juggling was outlawed the superior technique of dribbling wasdeveloped by players in the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association Leagues.Other early improvements included the removal of the bottom from the peachbasket, fastening the basket to a backboard, and for a time surrounding thecourt with wire fencing to keep the ball in play (hence the term«cagers» for basketball players).
The «New Sport» became particularlypopular at YMCAs and settlement houses in immigrant neighborhoods in the largecities. In New York the University Settlement House fielded championship teams,and by the 1930s there were Jewish Recreational Council Tri-StateChampionships, Lithuanian National Championships, Polish Roman CatholicChampionships, a National Federation of Russian Orthodox Clubs, Catholic YouthOrganization leagues, B'nai B'rith leagues, and countless other ethnicallybased leagues and teams.
The first professional teams were also ethnic, andhad names like the Detroit Pulaskis, the Brooklyn Visitations (Irish), theNewark Turnverein, the Original Celtics (largely Jewish and based in New YorkCity), the Harlem Renaissance, the Hebrew All-Stars, and the Buffalo Germans.The ethnic professional teams were succeeded by industrial teams sponsored byfactories as part of employee relations programs. This was particularly commonamong the rubber companies in the Akron, Ohio, area. Industrial teams were thenucleus of the National Basketball League (NBL) when it was organized in 1937.In 1946 the Basketball Association of America (BAA) was organized by the ownersof large arenas in major cities; only arena owners were permitted to enterteams. The NBL and the BAA competed until 1949, when the National BasketballAssociation (NBA) was formed by combining teams from the two leagues) [3,p.212-213].
The evolution of basketball technique and strategyoccurred as innovative players overcame the resistance of a conservativecoaching establishment. During basketball's first forty years coaches taughtthe two-handed set shot that turned basketball into an intricate pattern ofweaves and passes designed to produce two and three man picks (human wallsbetween the shooter and the defender) to give a player a chance to attempt thiseasily blocked shot. In 1937 Hank Luisetti of Stanford University scandalizedthe coaching fraternity by breaking all scoring records with a one-handed jumpshot. Orthodox coaches labeled Luisetti a freak, an exception to the rule, butthe more farsighted of them realized that the jump shot was impossible todefend against and that the old patterned play game was obsolete.
Another example of a plausible theory refuted bypractice was the coaches' belief that big men were too clumsy to playbasketball, despite the obvious advantage of their height. Professionalbasketball today displays several marked characteristics; the most obvious isthe appearance of bigger and bigger men at all positions who possess, inaddition to extraordinary size and strength, the quickness and ball handlingagility that once seemed the special province of «smaller» players(i.e., shorter than six feet six inches) [11, p.97-98].
2.1.2.3. Football
Football is unarguably today's preeminent spectatorsport; televised professional football is arguably the preeminent spectacle ofany kind in today's American culture. In some parts of the country high schoolfootball is the only religion with no dissenters, and in some areas the stateuniversity football team is the community's common bond and proudest boast.
Football is for most Americans their tribal game,and it has always appealed to their herd instinct. The game can be traced backto the annual autumn free-for-all battles between the new freshmen andsophomores at Harvard in the 1820s. A combination of the free-for-all, soccer,and rugby survived at Harvard until 1874, when the school played two footballgames against McGill University of Canada. In the first game Harvard's ownpeculiar rules were used; the second game followed the rules of McGill's fairlyorthodox version of British rugby. The Harvard students decided that theCanadian game was more enjoyable, so they voted to play according to thoserules thereafter.
It was at Yale that the game of rugby developed intoa game closely resembling today's football. The man behind this evolution wasWalter Camp, who played football at Yale from 1875 until 1882, when he begantraining the team, eventually becoming head coach. During the Camp era Yaleestablished a winning record the likes of which has never been seen again. From1872 until 1909 Yale won 324 games, lost 17, and tied 18, and from 1890 to 1893Yale outscored its opponents 1265 to 0! Walter Camp changed rugby into footballwhen he replaced the scrum with a pass from the line of scrimmage. Camp wasalso responsible for the down-yardage system; he introduced American stylebelow-the-waist tackling, and initiated the annual selection of an All-Americanteam.
Almost from the outset American college football wasa supremely effective means for binding students, alumni, and community into acohesive whole. The intensity of alumni and community identification with thefootball team fostered a win-at-any cost ethic and placed tremendous pressureon coaches to field winning teams. All this made a sham of amateurism and ofthe pretense that football was a normal part of student life like panty-raiding,fraternity hazing, or cheating on exams.
The ferocious drive to win, the primitive state ofthe rules, and the rudimentary quality of protective equipment led to anunconscionable number of serious injuries at the turn of the century, althoughthe exaggerated and colorful reporting of the period makes unreliable the oftenquoted statistics on the number of gouged eyes, fractured skulls, and brokenlimbs. The public's perception of football as a brutal upper-class reversion tobarbarianism by robber-barons-to-be was, however, strong enough for TheodoreRoosevelt to convene his famous White House Conference on football in 1905,which was attended by representatives of Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. Legendto the contrary, Roosevelt had no intention of abolishing college football; inany case he certainly had no legal nor actual power to do so. Had it come downto a test of strength between football and the president it would have beeninteresting to see who would have prevailed—or would prevail today.
In 1910 the rules were amended, supposedly to reduceviolence, but really to provide a better spectacle for spectators by eveningthe balance between offense and defense and «opening up» the game.The flying wedge was outlawed, the pass rules were liberalized, and the numberof chances a team was given to make ten yards before surrendering the ball wasincreased from three to four. These were the rules that Knute Rockne used atNotre Dame to build the greatest football dynasty since the old Yale teams ofthe nineteenth century, managing also to transform the epithet «fightingIrish» from an ethnic slur to a badge of pride.
The first professional football players were reallysemi pros, who played more for fun than the pocket money they got by splittingthe ticket take. Before 1920 the most famous professional was the Olympicchampion Jim Thorpe; Gus Dorais and Knute Rockne of Notre Dame were also prosof that era. In 1920 the American Football Association (AFA) was founded; twoyears later it was succeeded by the National Football League (NFL), comprisedfor the most part of teams from small towns in Ohio. It was the great Illinoistailback Red Grange whose publicity changed the professional game from the poorstepchild of the college game into a growth industry on its way to becoming themultimillion dollar business of the 1960s. In 1930 the superiority of theprofessional game was demonstrated when the New York Giants beat Notre Dame ina charity exhibition game. In 1936 the college «draft» system wasestablished, the final step in persuading the public to reverse its perceptionof college football's relationship to the program, and to see the universitiesas minor leagues preparing players for the pro ranks.
Professional football's symbiosis with televisionbegan in 1952 when the NFL established its blackout rule for home games. In1960 Pete Rozelle became the commissioner of the NFL, and under his astuteleadership the game achieved a level of popularity that made it America'sfavorite spectator sport. In 1966 the NFL merged with its new rival, theAmerican Football League (AFL), allowing Rozelle to designate the championshipgame between the two formerly separate leagues as the «Super Bowl,»which immediately became America's premier sports spectacle[3, p.214-215].
2.1.2.4. Bowling
There was not always a clear distinction betweenamateur and professional bowlers, especially since amateurs are allowed tocollect prize money. Most acknowledged professionals were instructors, butthere were a few who toured the country, giving exhibitions or playing matchesfor money.
Three professionals were pretty well known to thepublic. Andy Varipapa, a colorful trick shot artist, spent thirty yearsentertaining crowds throughout North America. He also won two consecutive BPAAAll-Star tournaments, in 1946 and 1947.
Floretta McCutcheon was the sport's leading womanambassador from 1927 through 1939, giving thousands of clinics, lessons, andexhibitions.
Best known of all was Ned Day, who not only touredbut also did a very popular series of movie shorts during the 1940s. Millionsof people saw the films in theaters and, later, in television reruns. Dayretired in 1958, the very year the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA) wasfounded. Under the leadership of Eddie Elias, the PBA set out to establish aregular tour of sponsored tournaments similar to the Professional Golf Associationtour.
For several years, there were only three or fourtournaments on the PBA tour, but the number grew rapidly during the 1960s,mainly because of television. To fit tournaments into TV time slots, Eliascreated the «stepladder» format that's still used in almost all PBAevents.
Competitors first roll a series of qualifying games,with the top five finishers advancing into the stepladder round. The fifth- andfourth-place qualifiers bowl a match, with the winner advancing to bowl againstthe third-place qualifier. And so it goes up the stepladder, until the survivormeets the first-place qualifier in the final match.
The Professional Women's Bowling Association wasfounded in 1960 to establish a similar tour. It wasn't particularly successful,so a group of players left to form the Ladies' Professional Bowlers Associationin 1974. The two merged again in 1978, forming the Women's Professional BowlersAssociation, which became the Ladies Professional Bowlers Tour in 1981.
As in golf, the women's tour isn't nearly aslucrative as the men's, largely because of the lack of television coverage. ThePBA tour boasts about 40 tournaments, many of which award $40,000 or more forfirst place. The LPBT tour offers only about 15 tournaments and first placemoney is usually less than $20,000.
Thereare four major men's tournaments, the BPAA U. S. Open, the PBA NationalChampionship, the Tournament of Champions, and the ABC Masters. Women havethree majors, the BPAA U. S. Women's Open, the Sam's Town Invitational, and theWIBC Queens. A fourth major tournament, the WPBA National Championship, wasdiscontinued after 1980[16, www.hickoksports.com/history...].
/>/>2.1.3. Problemsin professional sport
One of the most frequent complaints leveled againstprofessional sports these days is that the news about them often concernsvarious disputes between players and management, court cases, and other legalproceedings more than it does what takes place in the games athletes play» andspectators watch. Part of this comes from the fact that people have been slowto recognize that professional sport really is a business and that people maketheir living engaging it. In addition, the world of professional sport, as therest of society, is more complex than it was in the past.
Another familiar complaint, not without somejustification, is that professional athletes in the most popular sports such asbaseball, basketball, and football are paid more money than they could possiblybe worth. For example, as of this writing the average major league baseballplayer's salary is just under the incredible sum of one million dollars peryear! No wonder people complain. Yet, when a star player demands more moneyfrom his or her team, it is often the fans and the press who take the side ofthe athlete.
One of the most unfortunate results of the currentlyinflated price of tickets to professional sports events such as baseball isthat they are now accessible only to the most well off. This is a sad breakwith the past tradition of having a sizable number of inexpensive ticketsavailable to all segments of society. Over time sport in the US has become moreopen to all classes and ethnic groups. Recent moves by professional sportsmanagement to cater more and more to an elite clientelethrough such means as special luxury viewing areas (called sky boxes) atstadiums and arenas are an unwelcome departure from the mostly democratic developmentof American sport.
Only the most naive observers and spectators ofAmerican professional sport now believe that it exists in a realm that isseparate from other social concerns. Sport is also related to politics. It has becomea practice for politicians to associate themselves with championship teams. Forexample, the president usually phones congratulations to the winners ofbaseball's World Series; presidents have hosted the National BasketballAssociation (NBA) champions at the White House.
The attraction of major league professional sport isso great that there are keen competitions among cities for franchises. It iswidely accepted by politicians, the public, and the press that having a majorleague team in their city or region is good not only for the local economy butalso for the prestige of the area and even the morale of the population.Professional franchises often exploit this desire of localities to have a majorleague team by demanding and receiving extremely favorable terms for the use ofpublic stadiums. When teams do not get what they want from local government,they often begin to play one city off against another and sometimes move to anarea that offers a better deal.
Sport also has an international political dimension.After the Soviet Union joined the Olympic movement in 1952, the US and the USSRengaged in a long, hard-fought battle, especially at the Olympic Games, foroverall supremacy in sport [2, p.307-308].
2.1.4.Olympic Games and the names of American heroes
The United States has traditionally been a verysuccessful player in international sports events. The Olympic Games are thehighlight of international competition. The United States has had the pleasureto host Olympic winter or summer Games on seven occasions. The Centennial Gamesof the Olympic Movement took place in Atlanta in 1996. The Games were one ofthe largest in history so far, featuring almost 11.000 competitors. The U.S.Olympic Team has always performed very well and again finished first in thefinal medal standings in 1996 and in 2000. The next Olympic Winter Games willbe hosted by Salt Lake City in 2002. Hosted by Athens the next Olympic SummerGames will take place in Greece in August 2004. Following the national trialsthe United States Olympic Committee nominates members of the Olympic team. TheUnited States also participates in the Pan-American Games, the second largestsports event following the Olympic Games. They are held every four years precedingthe Olympic Games. The Pan Am Games consists of all Summer Olympic sports, plussome non-Olympic sports. American athletes also compete in world championshipsand other international sports events. Cyclist Lance Armstrong won theprestigious Tour de France in 1999, 2000, and 2001. Pete Sampras and AndreAgassi have counted among the top tennis players in the world for many years.Tiger Woods dominates the international golf scene. Track athletes MichaelJohnson, Maurice Greene, and Marion Jones are the fastest sprinters in theworld. These and many more American sports heroes rank among the country'sbest-known celebrities. The modern Olympics also have female competitors from1900 onward, though women at first participated in considerably fewer events.[14, www.usinfo.pl/aboutusa/ ...].
2.2. Leisure sports
2.2.1. Badminton
Badminton is a game played with rackets on a courtdivided by a net. It is distinguished from other racket sports, all of whichuse a ball of some size, by two intriguing features: the use of a shuttlecockand the fact that the shuttlecock must not touch the ground during a rally. Theflight characteristics of the shuttlecock and the pace created by constantvolleying combine to make badminton one of the most exciting sports to play andto watch.
Badminton has a long and fascinating history. Withroots in China over two thousand years ago, it was purely recreational until acompetitive version was developed in India and England in the mid- andlate-nineteenth century. Since that time, the game has gained tremendouspopularity in many countries. It is a major sport in most countries of northernEurope and Southeast Asia and is considered virtually the national sport inIndonesia and several other countries. Denmark, England, Sweden, and WestGermany lead the European nations in their interest. The game spread in the1870s to Canada and the United States, where national organizations similar tothose of other countries were formed in the 1930s. The International BadmintonFederation was formed in 1934 with nine member countries and grew to the morethan 85 nations currently affiliated in the 1980s [4, p.1].
In 1878, two New Yorkers—Bayard Clarke and E.Langdon Wilks—returned from overseas trips to India and England, respectively,having been exposed to badminton on their travels. With a friend, OakleyRhinelander, they formed the Badminton Club of the City of New York, the oldestbadminton club in the world in continuous existence. Badminton was primarily asociety game for New York's upper crust until 1915, when intercity competitionswith Boston's Badminton Club, formed in 1908, created a serious rivalry that continuedthrough the 1920s.
By 1930, the game was spreading across the countryand had become a serious, demanding sport for women and men alike. Clubsmushroomed on the Eastern seaboard, in the Midwest, and on the Pacific Coast.The Hollywood movie colony took to the game eagerly, under the encouragement ofa touring professional, George «Jess» Willard, who played exhibitionsin movie houses across the country to packed houses and thereby did much tobring the game to the American people. Willard was followed on the nationalcircuit by Ken Davidson, a Scotsman whose badminton comedy routines entertainedmillions in exhibitions in the 1930's and 1940's, and by Davidson's earlypartner, Hugh Forgie, a Canadian whose badminton-on-ice shows became worldfamous in the 1950's and 1960's. These three men combined great badmintontalent with superb showmanship to spread the game in the United States andworldwide.
Through the leadership of some of Boston's leadingplayers, the American Badminton Asssociation was formed in 1936, and the firstnational championships were held in 1937 in Chicago. One of the most famousnames in world badminton appeared at the 1939 championships held in New York.An 18-year-old Pasadenan, David G. Freeman, upset the defending champion WalterKramer in the men's singles final to begin a winning streak that would last his10-year badminton career. In 1949 he won the U.S. Championship, the All-EnglandChampionship, and all his matches in the first Thomas Cup competitions. He thenretired to continue his career as neurosurgeon, and he is still consideredperhaps the finest player the game has seen.
Following World War II, the first national juniorchampionships were held in 1947, and the development of badminton in schoolsand colleges led to the first national collegiate championships in 1970. TheUnited States men's team made the Thomas Cup final rounds throughout the 1950s,and the women's team held the ЬberCup from 1957 until 1966; but the rapid development of the game across theworld soon left the United States behind. Badminton continued to grow in theUnited States but at a much slower pace than during the pre-war years. Golf, tennis,and the major professional sports came to the fore, while the popular misconceptionof badminton as only a leisurely recreation proved difficult to overcome. Withthe addition of badminton to the Olympic Games as of 1992, it seems only amatter of time before the game will once again become a sport of great nationalpopularity and recognition.
The governing body for badminton in the UnitedStates is the United States Badminton Association (USBA). Through its regionaland state associations and member clubs, the USBA administers competitivebadminton play and promotes the development of badminton in this country. TheBoard of Directors of the USBA establishes national policies for badminton, andthe USBA office is responsible for the day-to-day administration of nationalbadminton activity.
The USBA was founded as the American BadmintonAssociation in 1936, and the current name was adopted in 1978. Thegeneral purposes of the USBA are these:
1. Promotion and development of badmintonplay and competition in the United States, without monetary gain.
2. Establishment and upholding of the Lawsof Badminton, as adopted by the International Badminton Federation.
3. Arrangement and oversight of the variousUnited States National and Open Championship tournaments.
4. Sanctioning of other tournaments at thelocal, state, and regional level.
5. Selection and management of players andteams representing the United States in international competitions, includingthe Olympic Games and the Pan American Games.
6. Representation of the United States andof the USBA's interests in activities and decisions of the InternationalBadminton Federation and the United States Olympic Committee [4, p.87-89].
Badminton can be played indoors or outdoors, underartificial or natural lighting. Because of the wind, however, all tournamentplay is indoors. There may be one player on a side (the singles game) or twoplayers on a side (the doubles game). The shuttlecock does not bounce; it isplayed in the air, making for an exceptionally fast game requiring quick reflexesand superb conditioning. There is a wide variety of strokes in the game rangingfrom powerfully hit smashes (over 150 mph!) to very delicately playeddropshots.
Badminton is great fun because it is easy tolearn—the racket is light and the shuttlecock can be hit back and forth(rallies) even when the players possess a minimum of skill. Within a week ortwo after the beginning of a class, rallies and scoring can take place. Thereare very few sports in which it is possible to get the feeling of having becomean «instant player.» However, do not assume that perfection ofstrokes and tournament caliber of play is by any means less difficult inbadminton than in other sports.
A typical rally in badminton singles consists of aserve and repeated high deep shots hit to the baseline (clears), interspersedwith dropshots. If and when a short clear or other type of «set-up»is forced, a smash wins the point. More often than not, an error (shuttle hitout-of-bounds or into the net) occurs rather than a positive playing finish tothe rally. A player with increasing skill should commit fewer errors and makemore outright winning plays to gain points. A player who is patient and commitsfew or no outright errors often wins despite not being as naturally talented asthe opponent, by simply waiting for the opponent to err.
In doubles, there are fewer clears and more lowserves, drives, and net play. (All of these terms are described in thefollowing text.) Again, the smash often terminates the point. As in singles,patience and the lack of unforced errors are most desirable. Team play andstrategy in doubles are very important, and often two players who haveperfected their doubles system (rotating up and back on offense and defense)and choice of shots can prevail over two superior stroke players lacking insound doubles teamwork and strategy.
As leisure time increases, badminton will no doubtplay a more important role in the fitness and recreational programs so vital tothe American citizen. It can be played by men, women, and children of all ageswith a minimum of expense and effort. The game itself is stimulating mentallyand physically, and it combines the values of individual and team sports. Thefact that it can be learned easily makes it enjoyable from the outset. Basictechniques are easy to learn, yet much practice and concentration are requiredto perfect the skills needed for becoming an excellent badminton player [4,p.1-2].
2.2.2. Bowling
Bowling was a very popular sport in New York City inthe middle of the nineteenth century. A newspaper said there were more than 400alleys in the city in 1850. It then declined for a time. One reason may havebeen that the larger pins made it too easy. The prevalence of gambling wasanother factor. Bowling, like billiards, was considered semi-respectable, atbest.
When nine clubs from New York City and Brooklynformed the National Bowling Association (NBA) in 1875, one of its purposes wasto standardize rules. Just as important, though, the clubs wanted to eliminategambling among their members.
The NBA didn't last long, but the rules its memberclubs established are still the basic rules of bowling. A similar NewYork-based organization, the American Amateur Bowling Union, established in1890, was also short-lived.
Meanwhile, German immigrants helped to popularizethe sport in the Midwest, especially in Chicago, Cincinnati, Detroit, St.Louis, and Milwaukee. With inter-club and inter-league bowling on the increase,equipment and rules had to be standardized nationally.
As a result, the American Bowling Congress (ABC) wasfounded as a genuine national federation of clubs at Beethoven Hall in New YorkCity on September 9, 1895. In 1901, 41 teams from 17 cities in 9 statescompeted in the ABC's first National Bowling Championships in Chicago. Therewere also 155 singles and 78 doubles competitors.
Under the leadership of the ABC, bowling quicklybecame both popular and respectable. Gambling was virtually eliminated--partlybecause of prize money offered not only by member leagues, but also inABC-sanctioned regional and national competition.
With the sport cleaned up, women were attracted tobowling in large numbers. The Women's National Bowling Association, founded in1916, conducted its first national championship the following year. Theassociation was renamed the Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) in1971.
Approximately 60 million people in the U. S. gobowling at least once a year. More important, about 7 million of them competein league play sanctioned by the ABC and/or WIBC.
A steady stream of young bowlers has been a majorreason for the sport's continuing popularity throughout this century. Bowlersof high school age and younger originally came under the jurisdiction of theAmerican Junior Bowling Congress, an ABC affiliate. That organization wasreplaced in 1982 by the autonomous Young American Bowling Alliance (YABA),which sanctions league and tournament play of bowlers through college age.
Although collegiate bowling is rarely mentioned inthe media, many conferences offer team competition and championshiptournaments. National championships have been conducted since 1959 by theAssociation of College Unions (ACU) and since 1962 by the National Associationof Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA).
Bowlingwas an exhibition sport at the 1988 Olympic Games in South Korea [9, p.23-24].
2.3. Sport for the disabled
Disabled Sports USA was founded in 1967 by disabledVietnam veterans. It was then called the National Amputee Skiers Association.In 1972 the National Amputee Skiers Association (NASA) was broadening itsmission. No longer solely serving skiers, NASA needed a new name. They chose tocall themselves the National Inconvenienced Sportsmen's Association. In 1976,NISA became the National Handicapped Sports and Recreation Association. TheNHSRA name stuck until 1992 when the organization was renamed to National HandicappedSports. In October 1994, after polling the organization's 80+ chapters andaffiliates, the National Board of Directors approved the most recent namechange to Disabled Sports USA.
According to Executive Director Kirk Bauer,«Disabled Sports USA» was selected for the following reasons:
1. The word «disabled» broughtthe organization in line with current language used by the federal government. «Disabled»has become more universally accepted than «handicapped.»
2. Disabled Sports USA has become anorganization of global importance. Disabled Sports USA fields teams to competein the World Championships for track and field, cycling, volleyball, andswimming. It is now necessary to use «USA» rather than«National» to reflect this change in scope.
3. Almost all of the US OlympicCommittee-member National Governing Bodies for able-body sports have«US» or «USA» within their name (such as USA Basketball, USSkiing, and USA Volleyball). Disabled Sports USA is a Disabled Sports Organizationmember of the U. S. Olympic Committee.
DS/USA now offers nationwide sports rehabilitationprograms to anyone with a permanent disability. Activities include winterskiing, water sports, summer and winter competitions, fitness and specialsports events. Participants include those with visual impairments, amputations,spinal cord injury, dwarfism, multiple sclerosis, head injury, cerebral palsy,and other neuromuscular and orthopedic conditions.
Disabled Sports USA is a nation-wide network ofcommunity-based chapters offering a variety of recreation programs. Eachchapter sets its own agenda and activities. These may include one or more ofthe following: snow skiing; water sports (such as water skiing, sailing,kayaking, and rafting); cycling; climbing; horseback riding; golf; and socialactivities.
Rehabilitation professionals and even the FederalGovernment recognize the importance of sports and recreation in the successfulrehabilitation of individuals with disabilities. When first faced with thereality of a disability, many experience a loss of confidence, depression, andbelieve their lives have ended. They are often alienated from family andfriends because there are no shared positive experiences. Sports and recreationoffers the opportunity to achieve success in a very short time period; to usethis success to build self-confidence and focus on possibilities instead ofdwelling on what can no longer be done. The ability to participate in a sport,such as cycling; skiing; and sailing, to name a few, provides the opportunityto reunite with family and friends in a shared activity.
Asan extension of the rehabilitation process, Disabled Sports USA offerscompetitive programs in summer and winter sports. Competition improves sportsskills. It allows individuals to experience the excitement of competition andthe thrill of victory, as well as the agony of defeat. These experiences helpprepare individuals after rehabilitation to face the adversity of a disabilityin their lives and to learn to bounce back in the face of challenge and change.
Asa member of the United States Olympic Committee, DS/USA sanctions and conductscompetitions and training camps to prepare and select athletes to represent theUnited States at the Summer and Winter Paralympic Games. The Paralympic Gamesare the Olympic equivalent competitions for individuals with disabilities andare recognized by the International Olympic Committee. For those who want toachieve their highest potential, opportunities are available for national andinternational competitions in alpine and Nordic skiing, track and field, volleyball,swimming, cycling, powerlifting, and other sports. The highest achieving athletesin each sport can qualify for the Paralympics [12, www.dsusa.org/about...].
2.4. Women in sports
Women'ssport in the United States, which has a population of 268 million, reaches farbeyond its borders and has had an enormous influence on women's sport aroundthe world. Two sports that originated in the United States, basketball andvolleyball, are now among the world's most popular sports. In addition, theUnited States has become a major training center for athletes from many nationsand Title IX, the 1972 U.S. legislation that has been credited with encouragingmuch of the growth in women's sports in the United States, has also helped to influencethinking about women's sports elsewhere in the world. U.S. companies are alsomajor producers of sports equipment and clothing. Women's experiences in thesporting life of the United States defy neat historical generalizations. Inpart this is because women never constituted a single group, and theirbehaviors and attitudes never conformed to a single general pattern. Women'sroles also varied across time, connected as they were to the broaderideological and economic contexts. Sometimes women were active participants (inthe modern sense) in a sport, while at other times they were behind-the-scenesproducers or promoters.
Occasionallyas well, women were consumers of sports, or spectators, and there were timeswhen perceptions of women's physical and moral «natures, affected sportingvalues, codes of conduct, rules, and even whether an activity was a sport ornot. Indeed, the perceptions of women as the „weaker sex“ helps to accountfor both the designation of bowling as an „amusement“ when women engagedin it in the nineteenth century and the development of the divided court inbasketball. Even today fans and the press persist in requiring basketball to bepreceded by „women's.“ Women play women's basketball, while mensimply play basketball [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org ].
2.4.1. Womenand traditional sports and games
Womenwere far more visible in American sporting life across time than the portraitsof them in many histories would suggest, and for no period is this statementmore true than in the years before the mid-18th century. About 1600, beforeEuropeans colonized the land that would become the United States, the earliestAmerican sportswomen were Native Americans whose style of life must be characterizedas a traditional one in which sports and other displays of physical prowesswere embedded in the rhythms and relations of ordinary life. Religiousceremonies, for example, called on women, and men, to dance for hours at atime, while rites of passage from maidenhood to womanhood included physicaldisplays and tests. Ball games occurred in the context of women's daily tasks,and the outcomes could affect one's place in the family or the village. Evenequipment and items for wagering, which women often controlled, came from thematerial stores of wood, corn, shells, and animal hides that were used andvalued in everyday life.
Themigration of colonists from Europe, especially Britain, and then Africa beganshortly after 1600, and these people, too, fashioned a traditional, organicstyle of life in which sports were interspersed with ordinary tasks andrituals. Initially, women were few among the colonists, and not surprisingly,there were few opportunities for sports other than hunting and tavern games.After mid-century, however, the gender ratio gradually evened out, and acritical mass of women were present to assume their traditional roles asworkers in the fields and homes and as producers of community gatherings,fairs, and family events. Some women owned the equipment with which settlersplayed games, especially card games. In rural areas where harvest festivalscame to be fairly common, women prepared the food that the grain-cutters wouldconsume during the post-harvest celebration. Then, too, villages and the emergingtowns became the settings for diverse social practices. On warm summer days inNew England, husbands and wives fished and sailed on the numerous waterways.Towns like Boston, Providence, and Hartford offered an even broader variety ofsports and recreations, ranging from dances to races to fist fights. By theearly eighteenth century emerging cities were sites for public, commercial, andphysical displays, including tightrope dancing by women and men.
Bythe middle of the eighteenth century, the sporting experiences of women of Europeanand African ancestries, as well as recent immigrants, were far more varied thanthey had been earlier. Enslaved African and African American women found somesolace in their brief respites from work on Sundays, in the evenings, or in thedays of celebrating made possible by the observance of holidays when theydanced, played simple games, and ran races. Agricultural fairs, initiated bywhite farmers, planters, and traders, also included contests, especially footraces, for black women who competed for articles of clothing. White farm womenalso made possible and engaged in an array of games, contests, and dancing attheir rural festivals and family events such as weddings and funerals. Occasionallyas well, women in farming communities raced horses, even against men, and theywere willing to wager on their skills.
Middle-and upper-class women, especially those who either lived in or visited townsand cities, had access to the broadest range of sports and other recreations.In the South, white women who lived on plantations raced horses and went foxhunting. As did their northern contemporaries, they also attended balls, playedcards, and attended the increasing array of physical culture exhibitions, whichincluded race walking, tumbling and acrobatic displays, and equestrian shows[13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org ].
2.4.2. Women’s sport in the 19thcentury
Thepursuit of active sports by women was not to persist, however. During the secondhalf of the eighteenth century, a series of complex changes gradually alteredgender roles and relations. Enlightenment ideology and the emergent capitalisteconomy combined to redefine women's place, to move them into the home and awayfrom public activity, and to emphasize biological differences (from men) asgrounds for keeping them there. In effect, the famous „doctrine ofseparate spheres“ drew from the same movements that resulted in a newnation and a Declaration of Independence that proclaimed „all men arecreated equal.“ The phrase was not tongue-in-cheek; even before 1800,women were seen as morally superior but physically inferior to men. Thecharacterization lasted for more than a century and a half.
Theimmediate impact of these changes was the movement of many, though by no meansall, women off the tracks and fields and into the stands, or out of public viewentirely, unless accompanied by men. The trend was especially pronounced intowns and cities among middle- and upper-class people whose lives wereincreasingly shaped by commercial and industrial tasks and rhythms and who cameto believe that women's central role was to bear and nurture children andfamilies. Slave and free women who continued to live and work on farms and plantations,as well as the increasing number who joined in the westward migration, did notexperience the full weight of these changes in roles and lifestyles. Indeed,the experiences of such women in 1850 more closely resembled those of theirpredecessors in 1750 and even 1650 than they did their urban contemporaries.They remained visible producers and consumers of traditional sports and otherdisplays of physical prowess.
Duringthe first half of the nineteenth century, perceptions and real experiences suggestedto some people that the health of middle- and upper-class women in urbanizingareas was declining. Educators, doctors, and writers of popular magazinearticles responded with analyses and prescriptions for improving women'shealth, including calls for renewed physical exertion via exercises and games.The logic of the health literature was simple and straightforward: if womenwere to fulfill their roles as caretakers of families and national virtue, theyneeded to maintain their physical and mental health. People such as CatharineBeecher, Mary Lyons, and Diocletian Lewis thus argued for the physicaleducation of women, started schools, and laid out regimens of calisthenics,domestic exercises (e.g., sweeping), and traditional activities such as walkingand riding. The movement to return women to physically active pursuits hadbegun, albeit in their private, domestic sphere.
Thiswould not, however, occur overnight. The urban areas that were home to many ofthe women targeted by the likes of Beecher and Lewis, as well as the economicactivities that powered such areas, had reduced the social power of traditionalsports and engendered an emerging new form, modern sports. Constructed by menfor men, games such as baseball were becoming popular in eastern urban centersat mid-century. Other activities such as skating, croquet, and rowing were alsomodernizing acquiring rules, specialized playing spaces, and an organizationalbase in clubs. Only gradually did women gain access to such forms. In the 1850sthey did so primarily as spectators and moral guardians. Especially at baseballgames, male promoters hoped that women would bring their perceived moral superiorityto bear on the crowds and ensure social order [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org
].
2.4.3. Challenging genderedboundaries
Notall the middle- and upper-class women were content to remain on the peripheryof the action, sporting or otherwise. As of 1848, a feminist movement hadformalized at Seneca Falls, New York, and especially in the North, othermovements such as abolitionism both encouraged women to be social agents anddemonstrated that their reappearance in the public domain endangered neithertheir health nor that of the nation. Moreover, the dynamic events ofmid-century, including the War between the States (1861-65) challenged the genderboundaries and expectations that had confined women to the domestic sphere formore than three generations.
Challengeis the appropriate word here, for middle- and upper-class urban women bothfound and made opportunities in public society during and after the Civil Warthat drew from their long-defined practices in their domestic sphere. Nursingand teaching were precisely such activities, but they were also ones thatrequired additional training as well as sound constitutions. Not surprisingly,then, some women demanded and received access to colleges, where they did astheir brothers did: they began to participate in some of the emerging modernsports whose social power was increasing in the aftermath of the Civil War andthe technological and communication changes of the 1860s and 1870s. At privatecolleges such as Vassar in New York and Smith and Wellesley in Massachusetts,women students formed clubs to play baseball and, quickly, tennis, croquet, andarchery. College administrators and faculty responded, initially to the influxof women and their own fears about the negative impact of intellectual work onwomen students, with requirements for medical examinations, exercise andgymnastics regimens, and the gradual absorption of women's sport clubs.
Outsideof the colleges, post-war middle- and upper-class women were also moving totake advantage of the increasing array of modern sports. Local gymnasiums,armories turned into playing areas, and a host of clubs that formed as men andwomen sought new forms of community provided urban and townswomen withopportunities for a range of sports, from skating and rowing to trap shootingand tennis. Such activities continued to stretch the bounds of activityacceptable for and to women. They also quieted some of the fears heldespecially by the male-dominated medical profession about the negative effectsthat physical movement in sports might have on women's biology and reproductivefunctions.
Aneven more significant challenge to the nearly century-old ideology that placedwomen in the home and in subservience to men came in the form of a machine, thebicycle. Invented in Europe in the early 19th century, early versions of thebicycle had appeared in various forms and had become the object of short-livedfads through the 1860s. Then came the invention of the „ordinary“(one large and one small wheel) and, subsequently, the „safety“cycle, and the latter especially appealed to women. Bicycle riding, and evensome racing, became popular, and the practice afforded women with a means ofphysical mobility and freedom that they had not known for generations, sincethe days when horse ownership was common and expected, even by women. Significantly,as well, the bicycle catalyzed dress reform. Bloomers and knickerbockers wenton, and corsets came off. The day of the „new woman“ was about todawn [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org ].
2.4.4. Theage of modern sports
Historianshave labeled the period from the 1890s to World War I as the Progressive era, largelybecause „progress“ was the goal of contemporaries, especially membersof the urban middle class. Achievement did not always match rhetoric, but manywomen did see their positions and the quality of their lives enhanced. Someurban working women, for instance, earned more pay and improved conditions, andperhaps not surprisingly, some of the industries that employed women organized,first, calisthenics or physical culture classes and then team sports to promotepersonal health and worker efficiency. Such programs became more widespreadafter the turn of the century and by the 1920s individual companies andregional industries had multiple teams in sports such as basketball, bowling,tennis, baseball, volleyball, and eventually softball. Among the results weregood advertising for the companies and competitive opportunities and even, on occasion,additional income for the athletes.
Anothergroup of women whose lives came to incorporate opportunities for competitivesports were the upper-class women. In the 1870s and 1880s such women had joinedclubs, social clubs, country clubs, and then sport-specific clubs, just as hadtheir brothers and husbands. They also engaged in sports in colleges and,importantly, on their vacations or extended stays in Europe. By 1900 seven ofthese women competed in their first Olympics, in Paris, and despite theenduring opposition of the prime mover behind the modern Olympic Games, BaronPierre de Coubertin, womenconsistently competed in the Games thereafter, albeit in small numbers and insocially acceptable sports such as tennis, archery, and even figure skating by1924.
TheProgressive era history of middle-class women's sporting experiences is morecomplicated. Especially before the turn of the century, they did experienceconsiderable latitude in forming sport clubs and organizing competitions and appearedto gain a degree of physical and personal freedom to sport similar to thatenjoyed by their working and upper-class sisters. Indeed, they initiallypopularized the newly created sports of basketball and volleyball, and it wasthe rapid spread of such sports, as well as field hockey, cycling, and tennis,that encouraged their teachers and recreation supervisors to form associationsand write rules. In men's experiences, it was precisely such associations thatwere critical to the promotion and expansion of modern sports.
However,many of the women who came to control sports for girls and adults, especiallyin institutions such as schools and colleges, had accepted the warnings of themedical profession that unfettered athletic competition would harm femaleparticipants, physically and psychologically, and detract from or even diminishtheir femininity. Consequently, in the 1890s, women physical educators began tolimit sport contests, initially by changing the rules of some games, such asbasketball, and eventually by altering the very nature of contests. By 1920school and college sports were often played not in contests between teamsrepresenting their institutions, but in play days or sport days, in which theconvened teams were broken up and the players assigned to mixed school teams.
Bythe 1920s the conservative approach of women physical educators was quitedistinct from, indeed, out of sync with, the attitudes and expectations of manyother people. The United States was experiencing its first mature burst ofpopular consumerism, which was buoyed by a fun ethic and a relatively expansiveeconomy. Clubs and teams for women proliferated, in part as more institutions,from urban governments to churches to saloons, sponsored teams or providedfacilities. Improvements and declining prices of sporting goods, as well as theincreasing popularity of sports spectating and sports as entertainment alsospurred the organization of leagues, both amateur and semi-pro. Beyond the paleof physical educators, the latter provided underground opportunities formiddle-class athletes.
After1929 the Great Depression disrupted this sporting boom, but it did not end itentirely. In fact, the popularity of industrial sport likely peaked in the1930s, and sports such as softball and bowling became extremely popular amongwomen. Women's Olympic competition also gained more popular support, in partbecause of great performances by athletes such as Mildred „Babe“Didrikson and in part because support continued to diminish for the mythologyof the negative physical and biological consequences of athletics for women.Significantly as well, women continued to enter nontraditional roles, a trendthat became more pronounced as World War II began. After 1941 more and morewomen took jobs that had once belonged to the men who went abroad to fight.Even professional baseball opened its doors to women via the АН-American GirlsBaseball League financed by Philip Wrigley of chewing gum and Chicago Cubsfame.
TheAll-American Girls Baseball League began play in 1943 in mid-size cities in theGreat Lakes region. The athletes were not, to be sure, the first professionalwomen athletes in the United States. In the modern era that honor likely belongsto female distance walkers in the 1870s and 1880s and rodeo competitors in thetwentieth century. Nor were they the only women professional athletes of thedecade. After 1949 the Ladies Professional Golf Association organized, offering$15,000 in purse money spread over nine tournaments. Five years later, womengolfers could earn $225,000 a year on the LPGA tour.
Inthe 1940s as well, an even more significant movement developed in AfricanAmerican colleges. Track and field teams were training at places such as TuskegeeInstitute and Tennessee State, and these colleges would produce the athletesthat would integrate U.S. women's Olympic teams and revolutionize the contestsand the records. By the early 1960s African-American athletes such as WilmaRudolph ran record-pace after record-pace, openingdoors for other black women and paving the way for Jackie Joyner-Kersee andFlorence Griffith Joyner, among numerous others. Other sports such as bowlingand tennis also integrated in the post-World War II years [13, www.womenssportsfoundation.org
].
The success of women's tennis, however, did littleto help the fortunes of women's professional team sports.
Women's professional team sports achieved popularityfor the first time in the 1990s, particularly in basketball and football(soccer). This popularity has been asymmetric, being strongest in the U.S.,certain European countries and former Communist states. Thus women's soccer isdominated by the U.S., China, and Norway, who have historically fielded weakmen's national teams. Despite this increase in popularity, women's professionalsports leagues continue to struggle financially. The WNBA is operated at a lossby the NBA, in the hopes of creating a market that will eventually beprofitable. A similar approach is used to promote female boxing, as womenfighters are often undercards on prominent male boxing events, in the hopes ofattracting an audience.
Today,women participate competitively in virtually every major sport, though thelevel of participation decreases in contests of brute strength or»contact" sports. Few schools have women's programs in Americanfootball, boxing or wrestling. This practical recognition of gender differencesin physiology has not impeded the development of a higher profile for femaleathletes in other historically male sports, such as golf, marathoning, and icehockey [17, www.usa.usembassy.de/sports_women.htm]
Tosum up all the given information, it should be said that the Americans even canbe called partisans of a number of colourful sports that are unlike those inother countries. The most popular sports are American football, baseball, basketball,bowling and etc. Most games are shown on television, and the camerawork is soskilful that the thrilling events can be followed even if you know nothingabout the game.A lot of people are keen on sports, both professional and amauter.Nowadaysthere are a lot of possibilities for different people to participate in sports:for healthy people and for disabled ones, for men and women, children andgrown-ups. Every person can choose a definite kind of sport according to histaste. At present a great number of various clubs, centres and leagues arefounded to help people with their choice.If to speak about women in sport, itshould be said that women's sports include amateur and professionalcompetitions in virtually all sports. Female participation in sports rosedramatically in the twentieth century, especially in the latter part,reflecting changes in modern societies that emphasized gender parity. Althoughthe level of participation and performance still varies greatly by country andby sport, women's sports have broad acceptance throughout the world, and in afew instances, such as tennis and figure skating, rival or exceed their malecounterparts in popularity.There are also several organizations in the USAwhich give a possibility for disabled people to look at their lives in anotherway or show them that their lives are not over yet.
3. RECREATION IN THE USA
Why has recreational sport in America become sopopular and why does it occupy so much of the attention and the time of itsadherents? Certainly the first reason has to do with the availability of freetime people have from work. The increase in leisure time by comparison withearlier in the century makes possible all time and energy spent by Americansplaying and watching sport. Yet, the question remains why has this time beendevoted to sport rather than to other activities such as music or the arts?First of all, involvement in fitness and recreational activities reflects theconcern of many Americans, primarily middle class people, with health andlongevity. The intense, highly visible involvement of a certain segment of thepopulation in recreational sport and exercise sometimes obscures the fact thaton the whole Americans are not much fitter than they ever were.
There are other reasons as well for Americans'interest in sport and fitness. The modern stress on appearances, what arecalled «good looks», is sufficient motivation for many to keep uptheir level of exercise. The mass media, including especially advertising, feedthe American preoccupation with youth and the appearance of youthfulness.Consequently, recreational sports have become part of big business, especiallyfor companies that manufacture the many products related to sport. In additionto its specific equipment, whether it be tennis rackets or bowling balls, everysporting activity has its own special wardrobe, complete with headbands, wristbands,indeed, something for every major part of the body. Footwear- for sport is awhole industry of its own, especially now that people wear running shoes, basketballshoes, and tennis shoes everywhere they go, including work, school, theuniversity, and church.
The challenges involved in sporting competition andin acquiring high levels of physical fitness also have an inherent attractionof their own that is tremendously compelling. There are many cases ofostensibly amateur athletes who spend every bit as much time training as doprofessionals. Recreational athletes who participate in events such astriathlons consisting of running, bicycling, and swimming often work part timeor arrange their work schedules so as to be able to train for several hours aday [7, p.211].
Although the overall percentage of the populationengaged in recreational sport is not markedly greater than before, those who areinvolved seem to be devoting more and more of theirleisure time to various sporting activities. In addition to public facilitiesfor such sports as tennis, golf, basketball, Softball, swimming, etc. andprivate tennis and golf clubs, all sorts of fitness and health clubs continueto spring up all over the country. Many of these clubs have «high tech»machines for virtually every possible form of exercise and fitness training aswell as space for aerobics, now one of the most popular forms of physicalexercise in the US. There has also been a growth in the number of specializedclubs dealing with the martial arts. The competition from the many new fitnessclubs has forced traditional organizations, such as tennis and golf clubs andYWCA's and YMCA's to diversify both the equipment and the activities they offerin order to satisfy members who want the convenience of a comprehensiverecreational facility.
There are some groups and clubs, such as runners andbicyclists, who do not necessarily need special facilities in which to train.Naturally, many Americans also pursue such activities as jogging, swimming, andbicycling, skiing, and skating on their own without any organizationalinvolvement. Other popular sports for the individualist are surfing and windsurfing. For those who like the thrill and the freedom of floating in air thereis also gliding, hang gliding,and sport parachuting.
Although sailing and yachting continue to be largelythe domain of well-to-do private individuals, there are a few places where thepublic can rent small sail boats. Much more common though is the rental ofrowboats and canoes at local, state, and national parks. Horseback riding isalso available to the public in many places. Equestrian sports such as dressageand jumping still remain the province of those who can afford the greatexpenses associated with these sports. And, needless to say, polo is also asport for the few; although it is possible polo will become more widely knownas a spectator sport.
Racket sports have become extremely popular inrecent years. Always a favorite, tennis experienced a boom in the 1970s and1980s that has now leveled off somewhat. Even so, tennis remains very prominentamong recreational pursuits. A game called racket ballhas reallycaught on with the public, and both indoors and outdoors racket ball courtshave sprung up all over the country. Squash was, originally found mainly in thenortheast part of the US but is now slowly gaining a foothold in other parts ofthe country [2, p.293-294].
3.1. Sports at colleges
3.1.1. College and sport
Youth is synonymous with energy — mental andphysical. Organized and informal sports provide teens with an opportunity toexpend some of that energy and, more importantly, to learn the value of fairplay, to achieve goals, and to just have fun.
In 2003, 58 percent of boys and 51 percent of girlsin high school played on a sports team. The most popular sports for boys areAmerican football, basketball, track and field, baseball, and soccer(international football). For girls, the most popular are basketball, track andfield, volleyball, softball, and soccer. As a result of a U.S. law thatencourages women to take part in athletics, girls' participation in high schoolathletics has increased by 800 percent over the past 30 years. Other organizedhigh school sports often include gymnastics, wrestling, swimming, tennis, andgolf. Away from school, teenagers participate year-round in community-sponsoredsports leagues. In addition, particularly in the summer, they engage ininformal «pick up» games of one sport or another in the streets andparks of their neighborhoods.
In 2001, a higher percentage of high school seniorsreported participating in athletic teams (39 percent) and music/performing artsactivities (25 percent) than academic clubs (15 percent), studentcouncil/government (11 percent), and newspaper/yearbook (10 percent). Femaleswere more likely to participate in newspaper/yearbook, music/performing arts,academic clubs, student council or government, and other school clubs oractivities than males. Males, however, were more likely to participate in athletics.
Sports also play an important role in the everydaysocial scene at American colleges and universities. University sports programsare offered at the intercollegiate (organized competition) and the intramural(club-like, less competitive) levels. Many universities offer sportsscholarships at the intercollegiate level to students who are both academicallyqualified and skilled in a particular sport. Athletic scholarships are awardedfor everything from archery to wrestling, with an eye on gender equality toachieve a balance between men’s and women’s scholarships.
Playingfor a college team on scholarship is one way students help pay for the cost ofearning an undergraduate degree. About $1 billion in athletic scholarships areawarded through the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) each year.Over 126,000 student-athletes receive either a partial or a full athleticscholarship. These scholarships are awarded and administered directly by eachacademic institution, not the NCAA. Award amounts vary from a few thousanddollars to nearly $30,000 for one academic year and do not necessarily coverthe full cost of tuition and living expenses. Scholarships are offered on apercentage basis, and universities have strict limits on the total amount theycan award each year [18, www.usa.usembassy.de/sports-youth.htm].
3.1.2.Sportand money
Intercollegiate sports and money have always been a hotlydebated topic. Rules prevent any college athlete from accepting money. Wheneversome basketball player is found to have accepted “a gift”, the sports pages arefull of the scandal. As a result, some college teams whose members haveviolated the rules are forbidden to take part in competitions. Severaluniversities like the highly respected University of Chicago do not take partin any intercollegiate sports whatsoever. Many other restrict sports to thoseplayed among their own students, so-called intramural sports and activities.
Those who defend college sports point out that there are noseparate institutions or “universities” for sports in the U.S. as there are inother countries. They also note that many sports programs pay their own way,that is, what they earn from tickets and so on for football or basketball orbaseball games often supports less popular sports and intramural games at theuniversity. At some universities, a large portion of the income from sports,say from TV rights, goes back to the university and is used also for academicpurposes. Generally, however, sports and academics are separated from oneanother. You cannot judge whether a university is excellent or poor fromwhether its teams win or lose.
In the United States, however, there are attitudes towardsthe mixing of commercialism, money, and sports, or professionals and amateurswhich often differ from those of other nations. The U.S. was, for example, oneof only 13 countries to vote in 1989 against allowing professional basketballplayers to compete in the Olympics. Similarly, American professionals infootball, baseball, and basketball are not allowed to wear jerseys and uniformswith advertising, brand names, etc. on them. The National Football League doesnot allow any team to be owned by a corporation or company.
Most Americans think that government should be keptseparate from sports, both amateur and professional. They are especiallyconcerned when their tax money is involved. The citizens of Denver, Colorado,for example, decided that they did not want the 1976 Winter Olympics there, nomatter what the city government and businessmen thought. They voted “no” andthe Olympics had to be held elsewhere. The residents of Los Angeles, on theother hand, voted to allow the (Summer) Olympics in 1984 to be held in theircity, but they declared that not one dollar of city funds could be spent onthem. Because the federal government doesn’t give any money either, all of thesupport had to come from private sources. As it turned out, the L.A. Olympicsactually made a profit, some $100 million, which was distributed to nationalorganizations in the U.S. and abroad [10, p.196-197].
/>/>3.1.3. Women'sCollegiate Sport
The past two decades have witnessed a large growthin women's sports in American universities and colleges. This is a naturalprocess related to increased participation of women in all areas of labor andpublic life. Women play virtually all sports that men do with the exception ofAmerican football and baseball. (Softball is a popular' women's sport. In theUS, field hockey is a sport that is played primarily by women.) The growth ofwomen's sport has also been enhanced by the erosion of old-fashionedmisconceptions about women's ability to play physically demanding sports. Theold notion sometimes expressed that women were 'the weaker sex" appearsincreasingly absurd in light of evidence that at the outer limits of endurancewomen may well last longer than men.
One of the spurs to the increase in women'scollegiate sport is the presence of federal legislation, informally calledTitle IX. For the most part, however, athletic departments around the countrytry to maintain a balance of opportunities for men and women [2, p.292].
3.1.4.Intramuraland club sports
In addition to intercollegiate athletics collegesand universities have large programs for intramural sports. Among men touch orflag football is very popular. Intramural teams often represent various studentorganizations, such as men's fraternities, women's sororities15 ordormitories. There are also teams on which faculty members play. Althoughintramural competitions are theoretically recreational in nature, they areusually very spirited and are taken very seriously by participants.
Club sports involve teams that are informal and haveno official or varsity status but nevertheless take part in intercollegiatecompetition with teams from other institutions. Club teams sometimes servespoils that are little known or practiced in certain regions, such as hockey inFlorida. Some clubs strive to become varsity sports, whereas others, such asmany men's and women's rugby clubs, prefer to retain the greater informalitypossible with club status. It should be pointed out here that varsity athleticteams are usually very tightly managed by their coaches and require as many astwo to four hours of practice per day. Students who want a less demanding schedulemay therefore gravitate to intramural or club teams [2, p.293].
3.2. Animalsin sport
Fishing and hunting are extremely popular in all parts ofthe country and have been since the days when they were necessary activitiesamong the early settlers. As a consequence, they have never been thought of asupper-class sports in the U.S. And it is easy to forget how much of the countryis open land, how much of it is still wild and filled with wildlife. NewJersey, for example, has enough wild deer so that the hunting season there isused to keep the herds smaller. Wild turkeys have also returned to the East andMidwest in great numbers. In the states of the Midwest, of course, there ismuch more wild game, and hunting there is even more popular.
Hunting licenses are issued by the individual states, andhunting is strictly controlled. Some hunters don’t actually hunt, of course.They use it as a good excuse to get outdoors in the autumn or to take a fewdays or longer away from the job and family. Indoor poker games are rumored tobe a favorite activity of many hunters who head for cabins in the woods.
There are many more fishermen (around 50 million in 1990)than hunters (17 millions), and many more lakes and rivers than bears.Minnesota advertises itself on its license plates as the ‘land of 10.000lakes.” This, of course, is not quite true: there are more. Michigan not onlyhas a long coastline from the Great Lakes, it also has what officialdescriptions simply call, without counting, “thousands of lakes.”[1, p.142]
3.3. Unusual sports
There are several sports and sports activities in the U.S.,all having their strong supporters, which many people think are a bit strangeor at least unusual. For example, Americans will race just about anything thathas wheels. Not just cars, but also “funny cars” with aircraft and jet engines,large trucks with special motors, tractors, pickup trucks with gigantic tires,and even motorcycles with automobile engines. Truck racing, it seems, has madeit big in Europe. In 1990, The European paper wrote that in only six yearssince it found its way across the Atlantic, truck racing was attracting “crowdsto rival those of the Formula One grand prix motor racing circus.” Other sportsare popular because they don’t involve motors. The first “people-powered”aircraft to cross the English Channel was pedaled by an American. And the firsthot-air balloon to make it across the Atlantic had a crew from Albuquerque, NewMexico.
There are also several sports in the U.S. which were oncethought of as being “different”, but have now gained international popularity.Among these, for instance, is skate-boarding. Another example is wind-surfingwhich very quickly spreads in popularity from the beaches of California andHawaii. Hang-gliding became really popular after those same people inCalifornia started jumping off cliffs above the ocean. Those who like more thanwind and luck attached a small lawnmower engine to a hang-glider and soon“ultra-light-weight” planes were buzzing around [1, p.143].
3.4. Camps
US Sports Camps (USSC), headquartered in San Rafael,California (just north of San Francisco), is America's Largest Sports CampNetwork and the licensed operator of The NIKE Sports Camps. It was started in1975 with the same mission that defines it today: to shape a lifelong enjoymentof athletics through high quality sports education and skill enhancement.
By associating with the country's best coaches todirect our camps and by providing them with valuable administrative andmarketing support, USSC has become the largest and most successful sports campoperator in America. During the summer of 2007 more than 52,000 campersattended US Sports Camps at 400 locations nationwide.
US Sports Camps include youth and adult programs inthe following sport categories: NIKE tennis, NIKE golf, NIKE volleyball, NIKElacrosse, NIKE basketball, NIKE softball, NIKE running, NIKE fieldhockey, NIKE swim, NIKE soccer, NIKE baseball, Nike water polo, NIKEmulti-sport, as well as the NBC Basketball Camps, Vogelsinger Soccer Academy,Contact Football Camps, Snow Valley Basketball Camps, International HockeySchools, McCracken Basketball Camps, Peak Performance Swim Camps, andProfessional Sports Camps.
From this chapter it should be concluded that over the pastquarter century recreational sport has become an incrisingly large part ofAmerican life.The Americans like to spare their lasure time doing sports andthat’s why they are ready to spend great sums of money to keep fit and be ingood form or just to have a fun and joy.Each person chooses sport that suitshim best: it can be a traditional kind of sport such as basketball or just somethingthat even can shock the public, for example wrestling. Nowadays in the USAthere are a lot of different programs in schools and colleges that allowstudents to get involved into public life. When there are summer holidays inThe United States, students are offered a variety of sports camps where theyare able to develop their physical abilities and just make a number offriends.Some kinds of recreation such as fishing or hunting don’t need muchmoney and many American men are always ready to spend their spare time doingthat. Moreover the natute of the USA has resourses for that.
CONCLUSION
Now I think we have found the ansver to the question why somany sports are popular in the Uneted States.One reason may be that the variety andsize of America and the different climates found in it have provided Americanswith a large choice of (summer and winter) sports. In addition, public sportsfacilities have always been available in great number for participants, even insports such as golf, tennis, or skating. The fact that the average high school,too, offers its students a great variety of sports, often including rowing,tennis, wrestling, and golf, may have contributed to the wide and variedinterest and participation of Americans in sports. This, in turn, may explainwhy Americans have traditionally done well internationally in many of thesesports.
Another reason might be that Americans like competitions,by teams or as individuals, of any type. It’s the challenge, some say. Somepeople point out that American schools and colleges follow the tradition of allEnglish-speaking societies in using sports activities as a way of teaching“social values.” Among these are teamwork, sportsmanship (when they win,American players are expected to say, “well, we were just lucky”), andpersistence (not quitting “when the going gets rough”). As a result, beingintelligent and being good in sports are seen as things that can go togetherand, as an ideal, should. While there are colleges where sports seem to bedominant, there are many others which have excellent academic reputations andare also good in sports.
Others simply conclude that Americans simply like sportsactivities and always have. They like to play a friendly play of softball atfamily picnics, and “touch football” (not tackling!) games can get started onbeaches and in parks whenever a few young people come together. “Shootingbaskets” with friends is a favorite way to pass the time, either in a friend’sdriveway (the basket is over the garage door) or on some city or neighborhoodcourt. And on a beautiful autumn afternoon- the sun shining in a clear bluesky, the maple trees turning scarlet and the oaks a golden yellow- it is fun togo with friends to a football game. And go they do.
So large numbers of Americans watch and participatein sports activities, which are a deeply ingrained part of American life.Americans use sports to express interest in health and fitness and to occupytheir leisure time. Sports also allow Americans to connect and identify withmass culture. Americans pour billions of dollars into sports and their relatedenterprises, affecting the economy, family habits, school life, and clothingstyles. Americans of all classes, races, sexes, and ages participate in sportsactivities—from toddlers in infant swimming groups and teenagers participatingin school athletics to middle-aged adults bowling or golfing and older personspracticing t’ai chi.
I think all necessary topics have been discussed inmy course paper and that means that this kind of work is fulfilled.
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