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Governing Bodies: Caster Semenya And The Rhetorical Management Of Sex And Gender Ambiguity In Professional Athletics, Samuel Robert Evans

English Theses & Dissertations

Sport has long been thought of as an "opiate for the masses," where a collective can forget about social, political, racial, or economic differences and unify to compete in the same space or root for a common team (Eitzen and Sage 202). Scholarship in sports communication, sports rhetoric, and sports sociology, however, has shown that this view of sport as an apolitical cultural institution separate from impactful political debate is oversimplified. Rather, sports are key sites in which beliefs about gender, race, class, and politics are made manifest.

This dissertation uses the case of Caster Semenya, a female South African …

Game, Set, And Match: Do Women And Men Perform Differently In Competitive Situations?, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper analyzes potential gender differences in competitive environments using a sample of over 100,000 professional tennis matches. We focus on two phenomena of the labor and sports economics literature: the hot-hand and clutch-player effects. First, we find strong evidence for the hot-hand (cold-hand) effect. Every additional win in the most recent ten Tour matches raises the likelihood of prevailing in the current encounter by 3.1 (males) to 3.3 percentage points (females). Second, top male and female players are excelling in Grand Slam tournaments, arguably the most important events in tennis. For men, we also find evidence for top players …

Patient-Reported Outcomes In Male And Female Collegiate Soccer Players During An Athletic Season, Johanna M. Hoch, Beth Druvenga, Brittany A. Ferguson, Megan N. Houston, Matthew C. Hoch

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

Context: Clinicians are urged to document patient-based outcomes during rehabilitation to measure health-related quality of life (HRQOL) from the patient's perspective. It is unclear how scores on patient-reported outcome instruments (PROs) vary over the course of an athletic season because of normal athletic participation.

Objective: Our primary purpose was to evaluate the effect of administration time point on HRQOL during an athletic season. Secondary purposes were to determine test-retest reliability and minimal detectable change scores of 3 PROs commonly used in clinical practice and if a relationship exists between generic and region-specific outcome instruments.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Athletic facility. …

Patient-Reported Outcome Measures In Individuals With Chronic Ankle Instability: A Systematic Review, Megan N. Houston, Johanna M. Hoch, Matthew C. Hoch

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

Context: A comprehensive systematic literature review of the health-related quality-of-life (HRQOL) differences among individuals with chronic ankle instability (CAI), ankle-sprain copers, and healthy control participants has not been conducted. It could provide a better indication of the self-reported deficits that may be present in individuals with CAI.

Objective: To systematically summarize the extent to which HRQOL deficits are present in individuals with CAI.

Data Sources: We searched for articles in the electronic databases of EBSCO Host and PubMed Central using key words chronic, functional, mechanical, coper, instability, sprains, and patient-assessed. We also performed a hand search of reference lists, authors, …

Out-Of-School Sports Time And Children's Body Weight Status: Evidence From A Longitudinal Study, Juan Du, Qi Zhang, Michael Stallone

Economics Faculty Publications

We used data from the Child Development Supplement (CDS) of the Panel Study of Income Dynamics in 2002 and 2007 to examine the relationship between the specific sport time spent during weekdays or weekends and American children’s body mass index (BMI). Time spent on out-of-school sports was recorded on a randomly selected weekday and a weekend day. Sports were further categorized as formal (organized sports such as sports games or lessons) or casual (any unorganized sports such as sports time in the neighborhood). Child’s height and weight were measured in person by interviewers. Body mass index was used to measure …

Good Girl, Bad Boy: Corrupt Behavior In Professional Tennis, Michael Jetter, Jay K. Walker

Economics Faculty Publications

This paper identifies matches on the male and female professional tennis tours in which one player faces a high payoff from being "on the bubble" of direct entry into one of the lucrative Grand Slam tournaments, while their opposition does not. Analyzing over 378,000 matches provides strong evidence for corrupt behavior on the men's tour, as bubble players are substantially more likely to beat better ranked opponents when a win is desperately needed. However, we find no such evidence on the women's tour. These results prevail throughout a series of extensions and robustness checks, highlighting gender differences regarding corrupt and …

Weight-Bearing Dorsiflexion Range Of Motion And Landing Biomechanics In Individuals With Chronic Ankle Instablity, Matthew C. Hoch, Kelley E. Farwell, Stacey L. Gaven, Joshua T. Weinhandl

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

Context: People with chronic ankle instability (CAI) exhibit less weight-bearing dorsiflexion range of motion (ROM) and less knee flexion during landing than people with stable ankles. Examining the relationship between dorsiflexion ROM and landing biomechanics may identify a modifiable factor associated with altered kinematics and kinetics during landing tasks.

Objective: To examine the relationship between weight-bearing dorsiflexion ROM and single-legged landing biomechanics in persons with CAI.

Design: Cross-sectional study.

Setting: Laboratory.

Patients or Other Participants: Fifteen physically active persons with CAI (5 men, 10 women; age = 21.9 ± 2.1 years, height = 168.7 ± 9.0 cm, mass = 69.4 …

Perceptions Of Support Networks During The Graduate Assistant Athletic Trainer Experience, Stephanie M. Mazerolle, Stephanie Clines, Christianne M. Eason, William A. Pitney

Rehabilitation Sciences Faculty Publications

Context: The graduate-assistant position can be a highly influential experience because it is often the first time novice athletic trainers (ATs) are practicing autonomously.

Objective: To gain an understanding of how graduate-assistant ATs (GAATs) perceive professional socialization and mentorship during their assistantships.

Design: Semistructured phone interviews. Setting: Graduate-assistant ATs in various clinical settings.

Patients or Other Participants: Twenty-five GAATs (20 women, 5 men) studying in 1 of 3 academic tracks (postprofessional athletic training = 8, athletic training-based curriculum = 11, non-athletic training-based curriculum = 6). Median age was 24 years.

Data Collection and Analysis: Phone interviews were digitally recorded and …