Читать книгу Alternative Models of Sports Development in America. Solutions to a Crisis in Education and Public Health онлайн

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As a nation, the United States must address such problems before the situation deteriorates beyond repair. If we want to continue to provide and enhance plentiful opportunities for as many people as possible in a wide variety of organized sports and recreational pursuits, preserving educational primacy along with improving public health, then I believe we simply must change how we do sports in this country. If we want to continue to develop elite athletes at local, regional, and national levels—in many sports, not just football and men’s basketball—who will excel at home and abroad, then we must change. The United States seems to be stuck in the past on this. Meanwhile, for its citizens, opportunities for better health and the personal growth that can be gained from sports are vanishing.

This book examines four potential and dramatic alternatives to the current model, including consideration of adopting portions of the sports club systems prevalent in Western and Eastern European countries, with a focus on Germany and the Netherlands. I spent fifteen months in Europe conducting research for this project as a Fulbright teaching and research scholar at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, in 2014–15. The research consisted of immersing myself in the system via empirical research, site visits, interviews, and focus groups to learn as much as possible about the European sports model and to ascertain if a similar model could be developed in part or in whole in the United States. I also had a front-row seat, figuratively and literally, observing how a local European sports club operates as my son Bradley competed for FSV (Fussball Sport Verband) Bayreuth on its C-level (under-sixteen) soccer team. Since most European sports club systems are similar, I made the choice to focus on Germany and the Netherlands, as they were the two countries I spent the most time in during my research sabbatical. As more fully discussed in ssss1, most countries in the European Union have a basically similar approach to sports governance, delivery, and development.