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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/21577
Description
Title
Sport retirement: Personal troubles, public faces
Author(s)
Denison, James M.
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Slowikowski, Synthia S.
Department of Study
Kinesiology and Community Health
Discipline
Kinesiology
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Literature, General
Psychology, Social
Sociology, General
Language
eng
Abstract
This dissertation addresses how people interpret their lived experiences in order to come to an understanding of their existence. Capturing this information, however, is problematic because the history, structure, and culture of society restrict our attempt to create ourselves and come to a meaningful, purposeful realization of self. Therefore, I examine those moments that are removed from the cultural script where individuals must make sense of their experiences on their own. These moments in our lives involve periods of pain, frustration, and anguish, and are classified as epiphanies because their resolution changes the course of our lives. Such moments in sport include injuries, performance slumps, and missed goals. These setbacks can be devastating and threaten an athlete's sense of worth, and force him/her to reevaluate his/her sport life and contemplate retirement, and subsequently begin a search for a new identity and a new focus in life. Through the use of interpretive interactionism and the personal experience narrative I comment on the difficulty of life after sport. My goals are to make the world of lived experience more accessible to the reader; create a text that will enable runners to understand their retirement better; and expose the public policies and institutions that makes retirement from sport such a crisis.
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