The phenomenological experience of ethnic integration by individuals in high school rugby teams

M.A.In this study the high school youth and ethnic integration in South African socio-political and rugby context is explored. It is hypothesized that sport psychology can make a valuable contribution to the process of integration and transformation in the South African sporting context. The historical context of sport in South Africa and the role of rugby as mediator in the process of racial integration on the high school rugby field is explored, as well as social concepts influenced by transformation and integration such as prejudice, discrimination, racism and territoriality. In South Africa change in the political context has brought about transformation on the sporting field and a resurgence in articulations of sporting identities amongst the youth. For this reason attention is given to different aspects of the high school youth experience, including culture, identity, prejudice and integration. Affiliation with a group offers the individual security, and this is where high school rugby can play a pivotal role in the future. In the context of high school rugby, in South Africa’s culturally diverse society, adolescents are often confronted with opposing viewpoints, especially as pertains to adult influence and peer interaction. Contact theory proposes that experiencing social success in pluralistic settings can break down cognitive barriers. Negative experience of contact however can result in a negative attitude to other races. It is hypothesized that integration in the context of high school rugby may have a significant effect on team cohesion, stress, coping mechanisms, sport devaluation and withdrawal, and collective efficacy and competitive performance. Cohesion can be considered to be one of the most important small group or team variables in rugby. Cohesion is positively and strongly associated with success in sports teams. Stress, particularly acute stress, has been recognized as a major stumbling block to satisfaction and to continued participation among youth sport participants. Sources of stress have unfortunately not in general been widely examined in the sport psychology literature, and among the rugby playing youth in particular. It is suggested that investigating stress caused by integration is imperative to help prevent the high withdrawal rate in youth sport. Participating in sport can place specific technical, physical and psychological demands and constraints on rugby players in terms of coping. In the high school rugby context, coping with stress caused by integration is explored. Factors such as selection based on merit and the quota system contributes to determining the attitude of high school rugby players towards ethnic integration. The need for rugby skills identification and development and concomitant issues such as sport devaluation and withdrawal are tentatively explored. Emphasis on skill and merit on the sporting field plays an important role in the avoidance of sport devaluation. Devaluation is reflected in players developing a negative attitude toward sport wherein they stop caring about the sport and their performance and as a result withdraw from sport. The development of qualitative methodologies such as phenomenology and hermeneutics has played a vital role in especially cultural studies in developing grounded analyses. This includes analysis of the complex ways in which people come to understand identity and culture as dynamic social processes, as well as connecting the acted experience of individual and collective people to wider structures of power. Qualitative analysis deals with explaining meaningful action, as well as with the concept of culture as the result of the process of interaction. In this research project, a qualitative approach to psychological research was followed. Use was made of non- empirical and subjective phenomenological research methodology. The purpose of this study was to examine high school rugby players’ perspectives in order to identify points of sameness and difference between players’ perspectives. The goal was to gain insight into the phenomenon of integration in rugby at a high school level. Interviewing players provide a rich source of information, which can potentially shed insights on key facets related to the issue. The Golden Lions Rugby Union (GLRU) expressed an interest in this study, and volunteered the use of their own research as well as high school rugby players as participants for the purpose of this study. Black, coloured and white GLRU players between the ages of 16 and 18 yrs participated in the study. Research took the form of an individual interview with the researcher. Written consent to record and transcribe the interviews were obtained from each participant. Participants were assured of confidentiality and anonymity. The interviews were taped, and the themes that emerged from this process as well as from the literature review was used as guide to determine, focus on and refine the final constructs. The participants in this study’s phenomenological experience of ethnic integration on high school rugby showed wide variations. The historical influence of South Africa’s past had a different effect on how the participants of the various races experience concepts such as prejudice, discrimination, racism and the influence of language on the high school rugby field. These areas all have an influence on how factors such as stress, coping mechanisms, group cohesion and the quota system is experienced, and this in turn affects on the one hand individual sport devaluation and withdrawal and on the other collective efficacy and the competitive performance of the team as a whole. The participants shared the vision that in the future rugby can play a positive role in the integration process of South Africa. In this respect rugby as a shared territory can provide an essential service in the process of integration and transformation in South Africa. This study may be exposed to several limitations that should be acknowledged for future research in this area. Examples, inherent in qualitative research, include the possible presence of interviewer bias, social desirability, and problems associated with self-report. Due to the paucity of exploration of the integration process in sport psychology literature, extensive use of the general (non-sport) psychology literature was needed to establish a conceptual framework. The researcher did not have the opportunity to present the participants with a final account to validate findings. A word of caution about this study concerns certain characteristics of the present sample. This study exhibited several strengths. Through the use of phenomenological methodology, the participants were given the opportunity to describe their experiences in their own words. The participants were also given an opportunity to voice their feelings about the process of integration on the high school rugby field. The study illustrated that in the South African context the fields of social- and sport psychology cannot be separated from each other. The adoption of a phenomenological stance allowed the researcher to become absorbed by the essence of the social and cultural construction of sport in general and the world of high school rugby specifically. The fact that the researcher is a woman added an empathic dimension to this study. In terms of recommendations for future research it is recognized that coaches and administrators have a wealth of experiential knowledge that can contribute to sport psychology knowledge. Quantitative research about the topic of ethnic integration on the high school rugby field needs to be undertaken. This type of research should ideally be done using longitudinal and cross-sectional methods in order to be able to report on the progress of the integration process in high school rugby. In addition, this type of research needs to be done on all levels of participation in South African rugby, from primary school- to national level. Future studies could also explore the possibility of developing therapeutic interventions to help the rugby playing youth of South Africa to deal with negative experiences of ethnic integration, to develop strategies to cope with stressful situations, and to increase high school rugby teams’ collective efficacy and competitive performance. It seems that sport in general and rugby in particular can be instrumental in the forging of a positive, integrated high school youth sport culture. Hopefully, this study will contribute to the further understanding of the phenomenological experience of high school youths of ethnic integration on the rugby field, and also have heuristic effect