Young people´s experiences of organized spontaneous sport

Organized spontaneous sport is a new form of sport that has occurred through the last year’s ventures of "The Sports lift". The aim was to attract physically inactive young people to participate. Previous research has, however, shown that the efforts mostly missed their target as primarily physically active boys participated in the activities. Therefore, the aim of this study was to increase the understanding of the involved young people´s experiences of their participation in organized spontaneous sport. The research questions focused on two aspects of the experience: (1) the meaning the young people ascribe to the activity, and (2) the experience of the logic of organized spontaneous sport. The study's theoretical framework was based on developmental ecology (Bronfenbrenner, 1979, 1995, 1999; Bronfenbrenner & Morris, 1998, 2006) and Tangen's (2004) concepts of embodied knowledge, embedded expectations and movements. The study was designed as a case study where individual interviews (n=6) were used to collect data. Interviews were conducted with three boys and three girls (aged 12 -15) that participated in the activities on a regular basis. Among the interviewees there were both previously in-active and active young people. The results showed that the function of the activities as an inclusive meeting point was valued very highly by the young people. It was an uncommon opportunity to do leisure time sporting activities with peers other than their closest friends and also in gender mixed groups. Further, the results showed that the experience of organized spontaneous sport was different for boys and girls. Gender role expectations, linked to particular gender coded sports, produced different experiences depending on the activity. Overall, however, the young people appreciated the mix of flexibility and organization that characterizes organized spontaneous sport and described it as something different from what organized sport offers.