We’re not too old to play sports: the career of women lawn bowlers

Abstract

Contributing to the growing body of literature about older women's participation in sports, this ethnographic study of lawn bowlers in Perth, Western Australia, revealed a five-stage career path characterizing club members' involvement in this leisure activity. After first being introduced to bowls through other people and/or changing life circumstances, getting hooked on bowls represented the second stage in which women found themselves irresistibly drawn to this sport for multiple reasons. Playing bowls followed next as members fluidly moved between being social players, serious players and temporarily retired players variously engaged in different levels of competition. Some, but not all, then chose to assume organizational positions as committee members, officers, delegates, umpires and coaches. Inevitably, women, in the last stage, faced physical but not necessarily social retirement from bowls. In the end, bowls became the vehicle through which this particular group of women built community.

Playing Our Way: Contributions of Social Groups to Women's Continued Participation in Golf

“…Thus, Scott and Godbey (1994) concluded that an increase in specialization may not occur over time for all participants, and as a result, specialization may be better conceptualized as membership in different social worlds, as opposed to a continuum of expertise. Similarly, in a study of women lawn bowlers, Heuser (2005) found that some of the women were not interested in being serious players and created a playing environment that met their needs (e.g., low competition, constant chatter between members, and a lack of concern for the specific rules). Instead, the women were interested in spending meaningful time with one another in a social and relaxed environment.…”

“…Sampling the disconnected individual in a random sample is potentially problematic though, because "the connectedness of humans is carefully sampled out" (Meyersohn, 1969, p. 55). Thus, while the act of participating in leisure has been recognized as a social experience, limited research has been conducted on the social or recreational group (Heuser, 2005;Scott & Godbey, 1992;Yarnal et al, 2008).…”

“…Further, recent work examining women's social groups in particular have identified the important role of the group in activity initiation and continuation (e.g., Heuser, 2005;Yarnal, Chick, & Kerstetter, 2008). However, an understanding of how this process occurs is still underexplored in the leisure and sport literature.…”

Are they ‘worth their weight in gold’? Sport for older adults: benefits and barriers of their participation for sporting organisations

“…Of the current research on the determinants of older adults participating in sport, these predominantly focus on specific sports that are recognised as traditional for older adults, such as bowls (Heuser, 2005) or golf (Cann et al, 2005, Siegenthaler andO'Dell, 2003) rather than sports in general. Further research has investigated mainly the intrapersonal determinants and partially interpersonal determinants of older adult sport participation (Litchfield and Dionigi, 2012, Dionigi, 2002, Heo et al, 2013a, Kolt et al, 2004.…”

Narrative analysis in aging studies: A typology for consideration

“…With this in mind, it is perhaps unsurprising that narrative forms of inquiry have burgeoned within aging studies to the extent that narrative gerontology is now a recognized discipline in itself (Kenyon, Clark, & de Vries, 2001;Randall, 2007). Within aging studies, narrative has been used, for example, to examine social policy (Biggs, 2001), issues of masculinity (Jackson, 2003;Smith, Braunack--Mayer, Wittert & Warin, 2007), interpersonal and intimate relationships (Jones, 2002;Rosenfeld, 2003;Matthews, 2000), physical activity in later life (Dionigi & O'Flynn, 2007;Heuser, 2005;Tulle, 2007), narrative maps of aging (Phoenix & Sparkes, 2006a, 2006b, body image and beauty work (Halliwell & Dittmar, 2003; Hurd Clarke & Griffin, 2007a;Paquette & Raine, 2004), experiences of health and illness (Jolanki, 2004;Faircloth, Rittman, Boylstein, Young & Van Puymbroeck, 2004;Sanders, Donovan & Dieppe, 2002), carework (Ribeiro, Paú& Nogueira, 2007Twigg, 2000), and retirement (Savishinsky, 2000). As part of this, narrative analysis has attracted interest and has been utilised.…”