Leveling the field

Leslie Picca: We do an activity in class where the students guess what sport I played. It gets into different kinds of assumptions and stereotypes — and they never guess it! I played rugby for seven years in high school and college.

Corinne Daprano: I played four years of college softball. 

LP: In Sport and Bodies, we are looking at how different dimensions of identity impact sports and are impacted by sports. We spend a lot of time looking at gender in terms of sports, but that’s typically based on a binary. We also look at sex, sexuality, race and ethnicity, in terms of how they impact sports. Also, social class, ability, disability — who has access, and who doesn’t. In sociology, we look at social constructions, and it challenges a lot of our students who are used to seeing things in terms of just, “Is the ball in or is the ball out?”

CD: Oftentimes, our students who are looking at the business side of sport will ask, “Why do we have to take this class?” Well, because you’re going to be working with people. They’ll need to understand some of these more controversial topics as sport managers, sport marketers, etc., and they’re going to have to find their way to some sort of solution for the organization they work for. By the end of the semester, the students get it. They have a deeper understanding of the social and cultural contexts in which sport operates. I often say sport doesn’t operate on an island.

LP: I feel like sports is really a lens through which we can better understand the broader culture. It tends to be a good entry point for students to … see the parallels between things we don’t necessarily think of as connecting, like what’s going on right now in conversations about DEI. How does this connect to sports? How does this connect to people’s sense of belonging in different spaces? It’s a lens to understand broader systemic issues and challenges that many times we don’t see.

CD: In women’s sports, there’s been a sea change over the last decade. There’s more visibility, although I would argue still not anywhere near what we see in terms of men’s sports.  As we talk about in class, the sport journalists, editors and producers are (still) not very diverse in terms of gender or race, either. We talk about how the media tells the stories. They’re the ones who control what is written in a blog, newspaper or online. They — like ESPN — are making decisions about what events to show and who’s going to sponsor what, etc. 

LP: I think about how much has changed just in our culture. When we started teaching this class, Obama was president.

CD: This is our 12th year teaching this course. It’s a CAP course [Common Academic Program is a common learning experience among all undergraduate students, regardless of major], mostly juniors and seniors. It feels like there’s always a waiting list.

LP: This class is very different than when we started. When we started, we spent a lot of time talking about sexual orientation, but that was before same sex marriage was even legalized. I think now of trans athletes. That topic was always there, but because of what’s going on in the news, that’s become a much more prevalent issue we discuss. Racial justice is also a topic we discuss related to sports.

CD: We discuss the many disparities and gaps that exist in sport, as well. There are health disparities like access to fresh fruits and vegetables, or do you have walkable neighborhoods? Things like access, just access to sports. Because sport can be expensive, like club sports. Since we’ve removed or decreased the number of recreational offerings, where do kids have to go? They have to belong to a club to play soccer. They have to participate in weekend tournaments that include travel. We talk a lot about that, too, that there are not only health disparities but also social and economic disparities.

LP: Especially for some of our students, they take for granted that they have access to that. So, we discuss with them how that connects to media images that oftentimes are celebrated — the rags to riches stories we see in the Olympics and at the Super Bowl. Students are seeing how these narratives fit with people’s daily realities.

We ask students to do their own individual research project, and it’s always interesting to see how topics shift and change. Some years, it’s images in the media, in terms of how women athletes are depicted. This past year, it was sports gambling and NIL [name, image, likeness]. And what I love about teaching this class, too, is that we change with it. 

CD: We like to remind them that the purpose of this class is to really get them to integrate concepts from sociology and from the sport sciences and think across those disciplinary boundaries. We really emphasize to the students that we’re here at UD and this is part of our mission to really look at this topic holistically. 

LP: I feel like many students are surprised when they come into our class. They realize, whoa, not everybody thinks the way that I do. But that’s the point; looking at how we can talk to each other with respect in that Marianist charism and be able to understand.

CD: As interim dean, I don’t have to teach, but I do because it’s so great to be with these students. I learn so much every semester Leslie and I teach together. The class really energizes me.