Getting the Girl: Female Athletes' Narratives of the Recruiting Process
Abstract (Summary)Current mainstream literature on the recruitment of high school athletes typically falls into two categories: exaggerated accounts of the recruiting process or practical guides to help one get recruited. Existing research on the topic tends to investigate the status of recruiting within particular institutions or the reasons why prospective student-athletes choose the college or university they do. In nearly all instances, little analysis of the gendered nature of recruiting takes place and stories from women's sports are rare. This void leaves us with little understanding of what it means for females to be recruited, what methods are used to recruit female athletes, and how female athletes make sense of their recruiting experiences. This project aims to fill this void by interviewing current and former NCAA Division I women's basketball players who have navigated the recruiting process en route to an NCAA Division I athletic scholarship. An analysis of their narratives provides a better understanding of the feelings that female student-athletes experience while being courted as prospective student-athletes, documents changes and trends in recruiting, and enables a richer comprehension of how NCAA rules and regulations impact the recruiting process and the lives of female athletes. Additionally, this project presents a way in which recruiting research can attend to both participants' experiences and larger socio-cultural, historical, and philosophical contexts by using a framework of feminist legal theory.
School:The Ohio State University
School Location:USA - Ohio
Source Type:Master's Thesis
Date of Publication:01/01/2008