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Black American males, specifically Black male athletes, experience a form of twoness that uniquely recognizes their talents but also a societal fear. This work addresses Black American males’ multidimensionality and emotional and psychological expressions when dealing with societal racism. This work explores Anti-Black misandry through an interpretive phenomenological lens. Five Black American men who are former college athletes reflect and emotionally express their experiences being a Black man and an athlete throughout their entire athletic continuum and post their athletic tenure. Results suggest that Black males are willing to express their vulnerabilities emotionally in safe spaces while recognizing racialized gender norms about emotional expressions. Implications of this study suggest that Black American male college athletes, when given constructive support, have meaningful ideas and resolutions about how society can honestly acknowledge their humanity and not just gaze at their existence as entertaining objects.

This study considers the long-term mental health implications of organized youth sport participation, informed by an accumulation model of health, the Sport Commitment Model, and a life course perspective. Using data from the National Sports and Society Survey (N = 3,931) and multiple regression analyses, results indicate that adults who continually played organized youth sport had fewer depressive and anxiety symptoms compared with those who played and dropped out and those who never played. Dropouts had worse mental health than those who never played. Furthermore, among dropouts, reported interpersonal reasons for dropping out of organized sport were consistently associated with subsequent mental health but some structural factors also mattered. These findings point to a need to improve the interpersonal and structural environments of organized youth sport.

Scholars have recognized that sports fandom is not static, but temporal and fluid. However, little longitudinal research has traced the development of fandom over time. This analysis makes a new contribution to the sociology of fandom and women’s sport by drawing from interviews with 35 U.S. adults who attended the 2019 Women’s World Cup and were reinterviewed after the 2023 Women’s World Cup to consider how and why fandom of U.S. women’s professional soccer develops over time. Findings show stability in high levels of identification but fluctuating practices. Themes of the life course and opportunity structure show the importance of individual and team/league changes to fans’ ability to engage in a range of behavioral expressions associated with their fandom and also account for the small number of participants whose attachment to women’s soccer waned. By offering new insights into the factors that shape (changing) fan attachments and practices, we advance knowledge about women’s sport fans at a time when women’s soccer is undergoing rapid change. Our findings can also inform future longitudinal work in other sport contexts.

Trans college athletes are subjected to inconsistent and inequitable participation regulations. We adopted feminist and queer theoretical lenses to examine the gender equity policies of eight sport governing bodies in attempts to further understand the systems and structures within which trans college athletes must participate and comply. Analysis indicated predominance of entrenched essentialist feminism and limited performative postmodern/queer perspectives, leaving trans college athletes vulnerable to discriminatory/exclusionary policies and practices. To conclude, we offer three recommendations to promote better trans athlete inclusion across college sports.