Trends in sport participation at South African universities

Abstract

Higher education institutions provide students with a relatively well-resourced and specialised environment for recreation and high performance sport participation. The relatively short duration of an athletic career contributes to role conflict of being a student and athlete with parallel sets of influences towards professional socialisation. The student-athlete as a unique population and their organisational management is faced with many issues, including the issue of inclusion, ethnic diversity, gender disenfranchisement and risk behaviours. The participation figures of sixteen universities obtained through two questionnaires, six interviews and nineteen focus groups reveal high success rates in league competitions, ranging between 62.1 per cent and 86.6 per cent for finishing in the first three positions. With an adaptation to the exact figure of 7 552, an estimated 10 000 students participated in league competitions in 2008. Three clusters based on number of participants emerged. Overall league participants represented a gender bias of 5 857 males (58.5%), 3 343 females (41.5%), and 606 athletes playing in mixed teams. The sports of the six universities with the highest numbers include rugby (n=1 270), hockey (n=1 248), cricket (n=748), football (n=537), netball (n=420), athletics (n=388), basketball (n=168), tennis (n=126) and volleyball (n=120). Issues of inclusion and gender equality should be addressed, as the majority of sports uphold the ethos of masculinity. Other social issues that warranted research and action include sporadic binge drinking, risk behaviour and role-conflict of being a student and athlete often experiencing contradictory and unreasonable expectations.