College Wheelchair Basketball Players' Construction Of Identities: A Symbolic Interactionism Approach

The National Wheelchair Basketball Association consists of 14 collegiate teams (NCAA, 2013) that are represented at both the NCAA and club sport arenas. Collegiate wheelchair basketball student-athletes have been neglected within the sport discussion due to the sports emergence status in legitimacy with the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) standards (Berger, 2004, 2008; Larkin, Cottingham & Pate, 2014; Shogan, 1999), and its perception of being a charity sport, where bodies that have disabilities do not play "natural body" sports (Berger, 2008). By using the collegiate environment to further study wheelchair basketball players, a deeper understanding of identity negotiation of student-athletes in wheelchairs will be added to the sport literature. The research used observation and semi-structured interviews to create an understanding of the identity negotiations of collegiate wheelchair basketball players. Symbolic interactionism served as the theoretical framework for helping to create a deeper understanding of collegiate wheelchair basketball players' identity under the creation of symbols and meanings through social interactions (Blumer, 1965; Burbank & Martins, 2010; Mandler, 1962; Shott, 1979). The attempt of such research was to determine how collegiate wheelchair basketball players negotiate between different aspects of forces found within athletic and academic and environments, as well as their own disabilities. It can be concluded that collegiate wheelchair basketball players at the University of Missouri negotiate between the identity complexities of being a student-athlete in a wheelchair through the lens of struggling for legitimacy within the sport and the organizational environment.

Name thesis:degree_name

M.S. in Sport and Recreation Administration

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Health, Exercise Science, and Recreation Management

Year dc:date.available

2018

Author dc:creator

• Hovatter, Alison

Contributors dc:contributor

• Grace Yan
• Misa Kayama
• Nicholas Watanabe

• Sports Management

Repository record dc:identifier

https://egrove.olemiss.edu/etd/1092

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:egrove.olemiss.edu:etd-2091