Hello everyone and welcome to my Odyssey page, for this first article I thought I would take a minute to introduce myself and let you know what I hope to do with this page. For starters a little bit about who I am a 24-year-old recent grad school graduate from South Dakota. I have my Bachelor of Science in Sports Marketing and Administration and a Master of Science in Education in Sports Performance and Leadership, both from Northern State University. I started writing for publication when I was a senior in High School taking a Journalism as an English elective and falling in love with the process. This will be my first time consistently having a sports piece since the end of my senior year of undergrad when I covered Northern State athletics for the school paper. I am an avid sports fan watching a wide variety of sports at all different levels. I love to read, talk about, write about and learn about sports. Although I enjoy many parts of sport my main areas of research over the years have been concussions, sport violence/deviancy, Women’s athletics as well as youth and collegiate sports. Outside of sports, I am a fan of all different kinds of music from rock to country and hip-hop to oldies. I also enjoy movies, a round of disc golf, and spending time with my family, friends, and dogs. But enough about me.

Through this page I hope to be able to share my opinion on issues facing sport as well examine the relationship between sport and society and the place of sport in the world today. Early in the studying of sport sociology, it is easy to see that sport is a microcosm of society at large. Which, in layman’s terms, simply means that many of the ideals and attitudes that are represented and/or expressed through sport and its members are common of that in society at large. A prime example of this can be reflected by one of my favorite political/historical figures of all time, the late Nelson Mandela. At the 2000 Laureus World Sports Awards in Monaco, Mandela spoke of the power that sports can have on the outside world “Sport, has the power to change the world” said Mandela “It has the power to unite people, in a way that little else does.” These were more than just words to Mandela who just years earlier had used the 1995 Rugby World Cup to help unite a post-apartheid South Africa by embracing the Springbok name and image, which many black South Africans saw as a remaining symbol of apartheid, and embraced them calling for it to remain for the South African national team. When Mandela showed up to the championship game in team captain Francois Pienaar’s #6 jersey it not only gave the team a rallying point it gave the country a symbol of unity and hope that had not existed for decades. Although this was a positive story there are many that are not. I hope to be able to look at both sides of this coin in future posts. Until next time thank you for reading and I look forward to posting again soon.