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This article assesses the life and career of George Powles, a legendary White youth sport and high school coach from Oakland, California. Born in 1910, Powles guided local American Legion, Babe Ruth, and Connie Mack baseball teams to various state, regional, and national titles and coached a plethora of outstanding athletes first at McClymonds High School, a predominantly Black institution in West Oakland and then later at Skyline High School, a predominantly White institution at the crest of the Oakland foothills, who would go onto legendary careers in professional sport. Among those he coached were iconic African American athletes who realized lasting fame for both their accomplishments on the playing field and involvement in the larger civil rights movement. Included among these athletes was Bill Russell, the Hall of Fame basketball player who led the University of San Francisco to successive National Collegiate Athletic Association national titles and the Boston Celtics to multiple National Basketball Association championships; Frank Robinson, the Hall of Fame baseball player and first African American to manage a Major League baseball team; Vada Pinson, the outstanding outfielder who played multiple years of Major League baseball; and Curt Flood, the gold-glove winning outfielder who famously challenged baseball’s reserve clause. In the end, Powles was a coach who served as an important mentor of Black athletes and believed strongly in sports power to bridge racial differences and instill important values and develop character among youth from all walks of life and cultural and socio-economic backgrounds.

This study explores the development of women’s physical education (PE) in Taiwanese schools during the Japanese colonial period. It seeks to understand how Japanese colonizers cultivated and shaped Taiwanese women’s bodies through PE in schools. First, Japanese colonizers faced the challenge of dismantling footbinding customs when implementing women’s PE and body engineering policies. However, when women were liberated from footbinding and the concept of natural feet emerged among the population, women’s PE came out of the shadow of footbinding. Second, as the natural feet generation arose, Taiwanese women started participating in physical activities and competitive sports while still abiding by the canons of the “Japanese woman.” Third, during the Pacific War, improving one’s physique and developing PE policies became part of a national defense strategy and the main focus in the process of producing imperial citizens. The body was given different meanings, yet its control and standardization were omnipresent under colonial governance.

International Sport Federations, as part of the Olympic network, have different organizational structures and decision-making mechanisms from the International Olympic Committee. The authors, in examining the history of the International Amateur Athletics Federations’ (IAAF) handling of the “China question” in international sport, probe how these differences translated into the IAAF’s organizational politics and power dynamics in face of governmental interference. Primarily examining archival documents obtained from the IAAF Archive and the International Olympic Committee Historical Archives, the authors particularly follow how the self-governing IAAF upheld, bent, and modified its statutes during its engagement with the People’s Republic of China from the 1950s to the 1970s and around its eventual admission of the People’s Republic of China’s Athletics Association in 1978. It is also argued that the IAAF’s engagement and inclusion of the People’s Republic of China allowed the consolidation of its monopolizing power in global athletics governance.

This oral history research explores the experience of ten retired elite Australian football players during their careers in the period from 1970 to 1995. The ex-players were interviewed about their careers by sports journalist, Mike Sheahan, in the long-running Australia Fox Sports Open Mike television series. The particular focus of this historical research is ex-players’ experience of on-field violence. Findings indicated that ex-players were willing to break the Australian football rules and engage in on-field violence either as intimidation or retaliation against opponents. When ex-players did engage in violent intimidatory behavior, they were cool and callous, and anger rarely played a role. Violent retaliation to opposition player transgressions was either immediate or delayed until a future opportunity presented itself. For one Indigenous ex-player, violent responses during games were often sparked by opponents’ verbal racial abuse. In retrospect, he considered this a form of intimidation aimed at putting him off his game that was just part of Australian football at the time. Some ex-players did feel remorse about their violent acts, but others were adamant that they had no regrets about their behavior. Violence was almost expected as an everyday aspect of their football experience and was accepted as an occupational hazard.