Organised sport is understood to have positive consequences for youths. Sports scientists have claimed beneficial outcomes including weight control (Pietilainen et al., 2008; Zahner et al., 2009), stress reduction (Berger & Owen, 1988; Gerber, 2008; Röthlisberger, Calmonte & Seiler, 1997), psycho-social development (Bredemeier & Shields, 1993; Bredemeier, Weiss, Shields & Cooper, 1987; Deflandre, Antonini & Lorant, 2004) and active lifestyles later in life (Richards, Williams, Poulton & Reeder, 2007). Even if all of these outcomes have at times been the subject of debate, the potential benefits of sport during adolescence have provided ample justification for exploring the subject of participation.

In the presence of enduring dropout rates (Gould, 1987; Richards, Williams, Poulton & Reeder, 2007), a long-standing point of interest has been why youths do or do not participate (Allender, Cowburn & Foster, 2006; Gould, Udry, Tuffey & Loehr, 1996; Hellandsig, 1998; Sirard, Pfeiffer & Pate, 2006). From the youth-centred investigations that have been conducted, we know that athletes’ judgements of their own competence affect whether they continue participation (Burton, 1992; Ommundsen & Vaglum, 1997). We know that aspects like competition, team atmosphere and enjoyment influence motivation (see for example, Petlichkoff, 1992; Ryska, Hohensee, Cooley & Jones, 2002; Sarrazin, Vallerand, Guillet, Pelletier & Cury, 2002; Sirard et al., 2006; Skard & Vaglum, 1989) and that motives vary across individuals (Hellandsig, 1998; Klint & Weiss, 1986; Petlichkoff, 1992; 1994). Research suggests further that personal motives cannot be considered in isolation because youths make decisions in social contexts (Barnett, Smoll & Smith, 1992, Lindner, Johns & Butcher, 1991; Martin, 1997). What is not evident from the existing literature is how non-participants position themselves vis-à-vis sport. This absence is surprising given that an understanding of such positioning might be useful in maintaining participation rates and/or encouraging individuals into sport. In light of this absence, the objective of this paper is to generate insights into youths’ non-participation in organised sport. Specifically, the paper addresses the question: How do non-participants explain their sporting abstinence? The current investigation diverges from previous motivation-oriented approaches by utilising tenets of narrative inquiry (Atkinson & Delamont, 2006).

One way that humans ascribe experiences with meaning is through stories. Often when people talk about occurrences they story them. That is, they explain their experiences through a series of events that are causally connected (Bamberg, 2006). As explanations, stories have a purpose, characters or objects that possess a continuous or coherent identity across time, events that are causally linked (Gergen, 2001; Labov, 2006).

While individuals ‘produce’ stories during conversations and interactions, they rely on cultural templates that are general and abstract. These templates can be referred to as narratives (Gergen & Gergen, 2007; Smith & Sparkes, 2009a,b). Of course, stories do not simply have rhetorical value. If an athlete tells herself that she lost because she had not spent enough hours training, she is likely to embark on a different course of action compared to if she tells herself she lost due to a series of poor calls by the referee.

During the process of analysis, we drew on “empirically sensitizing vocabulary” (Gubrium & Holstein, 1998). These included: narrative structure, identity, and narrative linkage. Briefly, ‘narrative structure’ refers to the type of narrative that is invoked. Narratives can for instance, be progressive where events lead to ‘better’ sets of circumstances, regressive, where a situation becomes worse and worse, or stable (Bloom, 1996). ‘Identity’ refers to a sense of self that is created referentially within stories through statements about self, other people and phenomena and relationships (Bamberg & Georgakopoulou, 2008). Chase (2005) suggests that the performance of identity is a constant and inevitable part of telling stories and encourages us to think of identity as a narrative accomplishment. Finally, ‘narrative linkage’ refers to the tacit assumptions that a listener needs to make to connect events in a story (Gubrium & Holstein, 1998). The idea of narrative linkage allows us to think about what is left unsaid.

The project was conducted in North Western Switzerland. Adolescents in grades seven and eight (14 – 16 years) from six schools were invited to participate in interviews on sport participation. Potential respondents were asked to provide details including sex, time spent in sport participation per week, school level and nationality of parents. These criteria formed the parameters for purposive sampling (Berg, 1998). The voluntary nature of the interviews meant selection was not wholly controlled. From a pool of approximately 350 volunteers, 52 respondents were selected. Confidentiality was assured and names that appear below are pseudonyms.

A team of seven researchers conducted semi-structured interviews (Rapley, 2004) at the pupils’ respective schools. The interview guide contained pre-defined questions on sport participation as a cultural phenomenon and personal sporting experiences. Interview questions were open-ended (Amis, 2005) and most interviewees considered their responses carefully and offered detailed accounts of their sporting experiences.

The interviews were transcribed and coded by a team of three researchers using a computer-assisted analysis program (Atlas.TI). Once data had been organised thematically, notes were taken, particular vocabulary was recorded and recurring metaphors were documented. In line with Richardson’s and Adams St Pierre’s (2005) notion of analysis through writing, transcript excerpts with their corresponding sets of notes were worked into written interpretations with tracts of text remaining in the documents.

In the following section, two accounts are presented. These youths have been selected because they provide the clearest examples of non-participants. There were other interviewees who did little sport but the two presented here did none at all and expressed little desire or interest in taking part in organised sports.

 

Of the 26 respondents that did less than two hours sport per week, only a handful described themselves as non-participants. Most of them talked about previous involvement and suggested that they planned to participate in the future. Our focus is on two youths who appeared to already have created positions as non-sport participants. In the remainder of this section, we introduce the cases of Faruk and Fatma.

Faruk is a 16 year old Swiss boy of Turkish descent. By his own accounts, he has achieved good grades at school. He paints an exceptionally detailed picture of his future: after studying at Oxford, he wants to become a brain surgeon and develop pioneering surgical techniques. Faruk’s key descriptor of sport is ‘aggressive’. This is a term that occurs repeatedly in his discussion of sport participation and is used as a counterpoint to his own position as someone that opposes violence. He says for example,

Faruk (F): Yeah, well, I’m a pacifist and I am basically against violence and I find in team sports people are violent and that. I think everyone needs something with which to let out aggression and many people do that with sport. Personally, I choose not to do sport and do it in other ways

His commentary provides insight into how individuals can ‘story’ themselves away from sport with minimal sporting experience.

Interviewer (I): Ok, why do you think that you have this relationship to sport and other people have a different one?
F: I don’t know, it just developed over time. And yeah, well, at primary school, I had, I didn’t have this kind of relation to sport ok it wasn’t exactly my favourite subject but I could endure it relatively well. And yeah, at intermediate I put on a bit of weight, mainly in the first year of intermediate, I was overweight and then I couldn’t really participate that well, and then my marks got worse and I think that in sport you need a bit of well, success. When you’re successful then, then you’re happy and yeah, that’s why lots of people like it because, because they have success… and I had, well for me, I didn’t have these successful experiences, that’s how things developed with me, I think

Faruk’s sporting story is regressive – the situation gets worse and worse. Participating in sport was at first ‘bearable’ but over time reached a point where participation could not continue. Two processes: increasing body weight and decreasing success – tellingly measured by school grades – combine in the story and result in a situation where Faruk disliked sport. Within this story, success is constructed as a prerequisite for sport participation, or at least, this is the logic that we are invited to use for narrative linkage. That the story is told in the past tense is also noteworthy since it gives the story a sense of finality. Even if this may be the result of the line of questioning, Faruks’s story implies irrevocability.

Fatma is 15. Her parents emigrated before she was born. Although she mentions that she does not have a great deal of spare time, she lists her hobbies as reading, watching television, being on the computer and talking. During her interview she constructs an ambivalent relationship to sport. She does not mind doing it at school but other than describing herself as lazy, she cannot, or at least does not, articulate why she does not do sport. It is only as a kind of afterthought that she adds a story of her experience in a karate club.

I: Maybe you think that sport doesn’t do anything? You can say that too.
Fatma (F): Yeah, it actually doesn’t do anything for me. Somehow, I don’t find it important, sport. And you asked before if I have ever been in a club. I did karate for three years.
…
I: Can you tell me what that was like or perhaps why you are not there anymore?
F: (laughs) Do I have to talk about it? (laughs) OK, well I was, I always had the white belt, didn’t make any progress (laughs)
I: Why are you laughing? Do you find it embarrassing?
F: Yeah (laughs) I never made any progress at the club. But I was quite small, 6 or 7 or something. Yeah, three years
I: Was it fun?
F: Yeah, actually it was more fun to, to watch the people and that, but sometimes I joined in
…
I: And how was it that you came to be in this club?
F: My father was there and I wanted to too, so I went and had a look, and somehow wanted to go and then I just registered and.. well there were a couple of happy moments when I could do something and then I was happy but yeah…
I: And how was it with the other people in the club?
F: Yeah, there were different nationalities and they were actually all really nice, really nice.. except for the trainer
I: Why? What was with the trainer?
F: I don’t know. He was somehow very rude. He always had some kind of whip in his hand or something and was really, yeah. He wasn’t ok, I thought
I: And do you think that this is the reason that you stopped?
F: No, my father, he finished because he got the black belt, a diploma and then didn’t go any more and then I just quit.

Although lack of success is foregrounded, it is not the single cause of sport non-participation as it is in Faruk’s story. Another character is introduced: a coach that employs questionable techniques. Yet when confronted with the possibility that the coach’s behaviour led to her withdrawal, Fatma rejects it. Instead she cites the end of her father’s sporting career. The linkage between the two events is once again subjective. For some readers, the fact that her father stopped might not necessarily coincide with Fatma’s discontinuation. For Fatma however, it is entirely logical.

The implications of the choice of explanation for identity is interesting. Lack of success suggests a person unsuited to karate – a suggestion that would make withdrawal understandable. Leaving due to a cruel coach would also be reasonable by most subjective frameworks. This story may have left room for Fatma to exit karate but maintain a sense of self as a competent sports participant. The eventual incident leading to discontinuation has little to do with the sport but instead relates to her family. The final narrative turn privileges her position as daughter and in this particular case, Fatma’s ‘daughter identity’ appears to be in tension with that of karate participant.

 

The stories of Faruk and Fatma presented above provide insightful cases with which to begin considering the issue of non-participation and dropout. We would like to focus on two areas that could have practical implications: (1) the narrative method as a practical strategy, and (2) the relationship of narrative practices to identities.

The cases presented above demonstrate the ways in which careful analysis of people’s stories can help us to understand how people make sense of their lived experiences. As other narrative theorists have noted (Smith & Sparkes, 2009a,b), narrative analysis can provide clues to the kinds of decisions that individuals will make in the future. In Faruk’s case, his sporting story has reached a fixed end state. Any effort to convince Faruk to try sport again will require overcoming not only his view that he is lazy and lacks the ability to succeed but also the idea that sport is inherently aggressive and competitive. In this sense, a narrative approach helps us to appreciate the importance of competence (flagged by investigators such as Burton, 1992; Ommundsen & Vaglum, 1997) but also see how incompatibility is constructed between person and participation through personal and concrete events in a subjective manner.

Fatma’s story remains more open. Her future decisions regarding sport however, could be expected to be dependent on her positioning within a familial context. Her story shows how her environment will affect her decision, again, a point already noted in existing research (see for example, Barnett, et al. 1992; Martin, 1997). Through the notion of identity we can start to think about how decisions impact on individuals in terms of who they are able to become. Indeed, we would argue that Fatma’s story shows very clearly how youths must negotiate their sporting identities within a process of constructing multiple identities (Bloom, 1996).

Second and in a related vein, these cases show particularly well how the explanations one offers for critical events leave their mark on the identities of participants. These findings accord with investigations of dropout (Burton & Martens, 1987; Cervelló, et al. 2007; Guillet, et al. 2006), which suggest that discontinuation is a potentially problematic time for athletes. While the issue has received scholarly attention at competitive levels, participants that withdraw from non-competitive sport must also be able to explain to themselves and others why they stopped. Providers of sport might consider how this process can be managed. Coaches in particular should think about how they can help participants to exit their team, their club or their sport while maintaining sporting identities. Of course, this does happen. Gymnasts take up diving and judo competitors change to rugby, to make two simple examples. Our contention is that coaches can assist in this process and that a narrative approach can help in this endeavour.

 

Organised sport is reputed to have a number of positive outcomes for youth participants. Research suggests however, that during adolescence, many youths discontinue participation and therefore miss out on these benefits. Much of the research examining youth participation has employed concepts related to motivation. In this paper, we adopted an alternative approach, working with tenets of narrative inquiry. We presented the stories of two non-participants looking specifically at the structure of their stories, the assumptions that were made, and the identities that were constructed in the telling of the stories. Each case was explored, following which the broader implications for practice were discussed. We argued that (1) listening to youths’ sporting stories can help sports providers better meet the needs of participants and possible participants; and (2) providers should consider playing an active role in the exiting process of individuals so that continuation of sporting activity can be facilitated. We recognise that with this short piece we have not so much presented a detailed theoretical or practical agenda as provided a point of departure. We hope that the practice and theory oriented stories that might follow will be both interesting and generative.