‘Humour helps’: Elite sports coaching as a balancing act

Abstract

This file was dowloaded from the institutional repository Brage NIH -brage.bibsys.no/nih Ronglan, L. T., Aggerholm, K. (2014 To date, humour's role in sport settings has hardly received scholarly attention. However, reflecting on future research within the sociology of sports coaching (Jones, Ronglan, Potrac & Cushion, 2011), it was suggested that 'the multi-functional use of humour, its intent, manifestation, and effect within the often emotionally-charged world of coaching, would appear to hold very interesting possibilities'. This formed the point of departure for the work presented in this paper. The study focuses on how coaches interpret the appearance of humour in the context they operate, and how they apply it as an integrated part of their coaching performances. In-depth interviews with six experienced elite Scandinavian sport coaches formed the empirical basis for the analysis. Based on Erving Goffman's sociology of social interaction, the data were analysed and discussed in relation to three main categories:humour's significance in the elite sport context, humour and group dynamics, and the performance of the coach. The analysis demonstrates that 'humorous coaching' can be seen as a balancing act between the inherent tensions of 'seriousness and fun', 'distance and closeness', and 'authenticity and performance'.

Coaches as sport workers: professional agency within the employment context of elite European basketball

“…Here we recognise that coach's approaches may be read in terms impression management (e.g. Goffman, 1959;Jones, Armour & Potrac, 2004;Chesterfield, Potrac & Jones, 2010;Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014). However, the intention here is focus more on the issues of agency, labour, and the coaches' navigations within the wider employment context.…”

Being a good sport: players’ uptake to coaches’ joking in interviews for the youth national team

“…The data illuminate how the coaches' joking and use of humor in interaction constitutes a way to destabilize hierarchy and downgrade the seriousness of this high stakes elite selection context (performance appraisal interviews, PAIs). Through interview data, Ronglan and Aggerholm (2014) have illuminated how coaches deliberately deploy humor to destabilize group hierarchies. This study offers an analysis of humor and jokes in talk during the final selection camp for the Swedish youth national hockey team in hockey.…”

“…Included in the idea of social skills is the ability to use humor or being humorous. This ability is often emphasized as important in many different areas, not the least within the sociology of sports coaching, where all elite sport coaches in a recent interview study testified about the importance of humor (Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014), for instance in breaking up the hard work and monotony of training. This paper extends prior research in documenting authentic coach-athlete interaction, exploring humor as a conversational resource in coach-athlete interaction (on coach-athlete interaction: Groom et al, 2012;Kilger & Jonsson, 2017;Zucchermaglio & Alby, 2012, on humor in coach-athlete interaction: Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014).…”

“…Drawing on insights from existential philosophy, Ronglan and Aggerholm (2012; highlight how humor holds important possibilities and argue that it forms a central part of coach-athlete interaction. Conversational joking in sports is seen as something that can be seen as part of an existential attitude of playfulness that is important for balancing stressful aspects of competitive game action and that enhances creative game performance (Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014). Some other work in sports (Edwards & Jones, 2018) and other fields (Terrion & Ashworth, 2002) has similarly highlighted the bonding potential of humour, especially for group identity and the cohesion of groups.…”

“…However, scholars within different fields have shown that this genre of institutionalized interaction is often framed as a type of everyday conversation (Losyk, 2002;Van de Mieroop & Schnurr, 2014). The use of humor is one important way of downplaying the seriousness of the situation (Glenn, 1989; on role distance, Goffman, 1961;Ronglan & Aggerholm, 2014).…”