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Communication Quarterly

ISSN: 0146-3373 (Print) 1746-4102 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rcqu20

“People care about building the community here”:Enacting community in a women’s recreationalsoccer group

Laura W. Black

To cite this article: Laura W. Black (2019) “People care about building the community here”:Enacting community in a women’s recreational soccer group, Communication Quarterly, 67:5,584-607, DOI: 10.1080/01463373.2019.1668445

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2019.1668445

Published online: 23 Sep 2019.

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“People care about building thecommunity here”: Enactingcommunity in a women’s recreationalsoccer groupLaura W. Black

This qualitative study uses the bona fide group perspective to explore how members ofa recreational soccer group communicatively enact their sport community. The groupconsists of women who meet weekly to play soccer together. Interviews and documentanalysis show that the women manage group boundaries and context through enactingalternative values, reinforcing discursive contrasts, and negotiating bounded inclu-sivity. These strategies establish the group as a recreational, supportive communitybased on friendship and compassion that is an alternative to hyper-masculine compe-titive sports. This study has implications for future research on life enrichment groups,particularly those organized by women.

Keywords: Bona Fide Group Perspective; Community; Life Enrichment Group; SportCommunication; Women’s Groups

The concept of community has been central to the investigation of human interactionacross disciplines and has particular relevance for communication scholarship. Com-munity can be understood as both a place and a group of people (Spoel & Den Hoed,2014), and the term connotes belongingness, shared meaning, and a sense of commit-ment (Arnett, 1986). Sone social critics decry a loss of community in contemporary

Laura Black (Ph.D., University of Washington, 2006) is an Associate Professor in the School of CommunicationStudies at Ohio University. Correspondence: Laura Black, School of Communication Studies, Ohio University,402 Schoonover Hall, Athens, OH 45701. E-mail: blackl1@ohio.eduNote: An earlier version of this paper was presented in the Group Communication Division of the NationalCommunication Association 2017 annual convention.

Communication QuarterlyVol. 67, No. 5, 2019, pp. 584–607

ISSN 0146-3373 print/1746-4102 online © 2019 Eastern Communication AssociationDOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/01463373.2019.1668445

society (Putnam, 2000), while other scholars explore meaningful local communitycollaboration (Heath & Frey, 2004) or efforts to build community capacity (Wolfe,Black, Munz, & Okamoto, 2017). These projects take seriously the role that commu-nication has in creating, maintaining, or disrupting community. As Wolfe and collea-gues note, “the god-term of ‘community’ is regularly invoked as if to simply describesome preexisting, external, and immutable object. However, a discourse of ‘community’also creates community—rendering it consequential and meaningful as a set of beliefs,attitudes, and practices” (2017, p. 169). To understand community, then, requiresattention to how those meanings are enacted in particular groups.

Cohen argues that community indicates that a group of people share something incommon, which distinguishes them from other groups. Community “expressesa relational idea” because it “seems to imply simultaneously both similarity anddifference” (1985, p. 11). To fully understand the enactment of community, scholarsshould examine communicative practices that create the relational aspects of com-munity and also those practices that allow groups to manage their boundaries. Thebona fide group perspective (Putnam & Stohl, 1990) is well suited to this taskbecause it highlights how groups manage their boundaries and relate to their contextcommunicatively. As Putnam, Stohl, and Baker (2012) argue, the “ways in whichgroups create identities and negotiate their boundaries comprise the central mechan-isms that define and constitute the nature of ‘groupness’” (p. 213).

The idea of community can be studied in a wide range of contexts. However, as Frey(2003) argues “if, as many have claimed, groups are the fundamental unit by whicha society organizes itself, community groups are the building blocks of a civic society”(2003, p. 9). This study examines a particular type of community group where womencome together to play soccer . TheWomen’s League is a self-organized, voluntary group;an example of what Kramer (2002) calls a “life enrichment group.” Unlike work andfamily groups, life enrichment groups are “not essential expectations of our society.”People join them voluntarily, and participation can provide members “a richer, morediverse life experience” (p.169). Because participation is voluntary, life enrichmentgroups such as community choirs, theater troupes, or volunteer committees have toprovide a sense of meaningfulness for their members. Kramer and colleagues haveshown that such groups accomplish this meaningfulness by engaging in communicationprocesses that are responsive to their group boundaries and context (Kramer, 2002,2005, 2011; Meisenbach & Kramer, 2014).

Like other life enrichment groups, the Women’s League is a voluntary group that isorganized around life enrichment goals. Members are primarily middle-aged womenwhomeet every week to play soccer together. In its nine years of existence, the group hasgone through some major transitions in terms of membership, processes, and organiza-tional affiliation. These changes position the group as an interesting case that isparticularly relevant to the bona fide perspective. Specifically, this group highlights theinterconnection of internal communication processes—in this case, their modified andsomewhat unusual approach to the game of soccer—and the negotiation of boundariesand context. Drawing on the bona fide group perspective, this study examines how

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members of the Women’s League enact community by negotiating their group bound-aries and context.

Literature review

Early theorizing about the nature of community came from Ferdinand Tönnies(1887/1957), who offered two conceptually distinct ways of understanding socialorganization, Gmeinschaft (translated as community) and Gesellschaft (translated associety). In Gesellschaft, social relations are based on “rational will,” meaning thatpeople interact with some shared specific end or purpose. This kind of socialorganization, Tönnies argues, is common in industrialized societies and bureaucraticorganizations. In contrast, Gmeinschaft, or community, involves groups that areorganized around friendship, family, and neighborly relations. Community, in thissense, is typified by personal relationships and emotional connections.

In contemporary scholarship, community is often understood as a place (Heath &Frey, 2004; Jeffres, Dobos, & Sweeny, 1987) and/or a group of people (Spoel & DenHoed, 2014) that moves beyond immediate family and involves a shared set of valuesor meanings. McMillan and colleagues (McMillan & Chavis, 1986; Peterson, Speer, &McMillan, 2008) study people’s “sense of community,” which they define as “thefundamental human phenomenon of collective experience” (Peterson, Speer, &McMillan, 2008, p. 62). An individual’s sense of community includes their feelingof group membership, their influence in the group, an emotional connection withothers, and a sense that the group fulfills their needs. This range of definitionspresent community as a type of human relationship, a group of people,a geographical place, a system of meaning, and a sense of attachment individualsfeel toward their group. Communication scholars (Adelman & Frey, 1997; Arnett,1986; Cohen, 1985) argue that all of these aspects of community emerge fromcommunication. Building on Geertz’s metaphor of culture as a web of meaning,Adelman and Frey define community as,

a web spun of space, identity, emotional connection, interdependence, commonsymbols, and mutual influence … Community is created and sustained by every-day patterns of human interaction (spinning the web) that take on shared meaningamong members of a particular group … . Ultimately community is a socialconstruction, grounded in symbolic meanings and communicative practices ofindividuals. (1997, p. 5)

This project explores the communication processes of a sport community by focusingclose attention to how members define their group and manage their boundaries.

Communication and community can be studied from various theoretical perspec-tives. Studies of alternative and feminist organizing (e.g., Ashcraft &Mumby, 2004) haveemphasized the communicative complexity in groups who organize around values thatresist hegemonic ideologies and structures. In this way, the Women’s League could beexplored through theories of alternative organizing practices. However, this paperutilizes the bona fide group perspective as a theoretical anchor because of the theory's

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explicit focus on how group members communicatively manage their boundaries andcontext. The bona fide group perspective has been influential in the field of groupcommunication and it rests on two central premises. First, group boundaries arepermeable and fluid, rather than fixed. This not only means that the composition ofa group shifts over time, but also that members negotiate their identity in the group inlight of their other memberships, roles, and relationships (Putnam, 1994; Putnam &Stohl, 1990). Second, groups exist within a particular environment and are interdepen-dent with other groups in that context.

The bona fide perspective has inspired a large body of research investigating groups inorganizational, community, mediated, and global contexts (Frey, 2003; Kramer, 2002;Lammers & Krikorian, 1997) and is useful for current project. Describing something asa “community” invokes both a sense of meaningful connection with other members andalso some kind of boundary. Thus, whenmembers construe their group as a “community”they are simultaneously managing the meaning of groupmembership and negotiating thegroup’s relationship to its context.

Communication, community, and sport

Meân andHalone (2010)maintain that “sport is a dynamic site that occurs across multiplelevels (individuals, teams, organizations, locales, cultures, and nations).” The study ofcommunication is important, they argue, because, “language, representations, and otherdiscursive practices are pivotal for the construction and enactment of sport across thesemultiple levels” (p. 253). Similarly, Kassing et al. (2004) note, “communication functionsto constitute and give meaning to the experience of sport” and that the community ofsport is “co-created and sustained communicatively” (p. 373). Sport communication isa rapidly developing area of research that includes studies of sport teams, coaching, fanculture, mediated messages, and discourses surrounding professional athletes. Given thatthe Women’s League is organized around the game of soccer, sport discourses areinfluential in their community. The research areas that are most directly relevant to thisstudy are studies of community and sport, gender, and recreational contexts.

Studies of community and sport draw on Anderson's (1991) concept of an “ima-gined community,” which was originally developed to explain nationalism. Ander-son argues that imagined communities rely on people’s shared sense of identity, whichis bolstered through messages emphasizing belongness. Even across vast geographicdistances, members of imagined communities feel a connection to others who sharetheir identity. Sport scholars have taken up the idea of imagined communities toexplain aspects of fan culture such as the development of national soccer identity andthe roles of traditional and social media (Crawford, 2004; Ferriter, 2009; Lechner,2007). These studies demonstrate how a sport community emphasizes connectionbetween sport teams and fans. This shared sense of identity simultaneously denotesmembership and highlights differences between insiders and outsiders. Althoughthese studies examine fans, rather than athletes, they highlight connections betweencommunication, community, and identity that are relevant to the current project.

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Sport communication research has largely focused on either youth or professionalcontexts (Billings, Butterworth, & Turman, 2015) and has overlooked adult recrea-tional sports. This is unfortunate because millions of adults in the U.S. engage inorganized recreational sports on a regular basis and adult participation in recrea-tional team sports such as soccer has increased in the U.S. over the last ten years(Physical Activity Council, 2016). As aging Baby Boomers and Generation Xers turnattention to their personal fitness and wellness, communication scholars ought topay more attention to adult recreational sports. It is quite likely that researchfindings from professional contexts are not transferrable to adults’ recreationalsports experiences.

Many of the adults participating in recreational fitness activities are women, and it iscommon for fitness groups to be organized explicitly by and for women. Gender playsan important role in every group (Meyers et al., 2005), and women’s groups can organizearound different values than groups that are dominated by men (Ashcraft & Mumby,2004). Women’s groups can also enact group communication processes such as leader-ship, role negotiation, and task performance in ways that differ from mixed-sex groups(e.g., Wyatt, 1988). In a recreational sport context, these differences are likely tomanifestin group norms that deviate from traditional sports behaviors. As such, it is important tohighlight the voices of women participating in recreational sports.

Sport communication research on gender has predominantly focused on topicssuch as differences in media coverage for men and women’s sports, sexual harass-ment or discrimination in professional sports, and gendered language or masculinity(Billings et al., 2015; Shugart, 2003; Wenner, 2017). For example, Meân and Kassing(2008) show that professional women soccer players discursively manage gender anddraw on masculine discourses when describing their identity as athletes. Despitebeing world class athletes, the professional women soccer players they interviewedconstructed their own athlete identity in ways that reinforced hegemonic discoursesof heterosexuality and femininity. These societal understandings of gender and sportare also likely to have implications for women’s experiences in recreational sports.

There are a handful of communication studies of women’s recreational sports.The most relevant to the investigation of community are Zanin, Hoelscher, andKramer (2016), which traced rhetorical visions of collective identity in a women’sclub rugby team, and Theberge’s (1995) investigation of a women’s ice hockey team.Both studies examine how members’ communication help shape the group’s sense ofidentity through their sport performance, collaboration, social comparison, humor,and support for one another. Notably, both of these studies examine groups thathave much a more formal, traditional sport structure than the group studied in thispaper. Unlike the teams studied by Theberge and Zanin and colleagues, the women’ssoccer group investigated here has no coach, no spectators, and no competitorsoutside of their own group. Women self-organize to play soccer together each week;they do not travel or compete against other teams. These structural and contextualdifferences position the Women’s League as an interesting case because group

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members have autonomy to craft their community relatively free of the influence ofspectators, coaches, or league officials.

This study poses the research question: How is “community” in the Women’sLeague enacted communicatively? As Kassing et al. (2004) note, “enactment isconcerned with everyday practices and habits of language” and includes studyboth of participant interaction and “how communication functions to shape theprevailing ideologies, discourses, and beliefs about the way things are done” (p. 376).Sport communication research on enactment includes studies of coach, athlete, andteammate interactions as well as how ideologies related to gender are discursivelyreinforced and resisted. The present study treats the bona fide perspective as anenacted process by investigating, as Putnam, Stohl, and Baker suggest, how groupmembers “maintain their sense of groupness while negotiating their internal andexternal existence across time and space” (2012, p. 214, emphasis in original).Investigating the enactment of community emphasizes participants’ communicationpractices that are inherent to the group’s sense of community and how the groupmaintains its community by managing its boundaries and relationship to its context.

Methods

The primary data for this study comes from interviews with 12 members of thewomen’s recreational soccer league. The Women’s League is a relatively small groupwith only 15–20 members who participate on a regular basis (i.e., at least oncea month), roughly half of whom participate every week. All members of theWomen’s League were invited to participate in the study and interviews wererepeatedly solicited until reaching data saturation, the point at which interviewswere not producing new information or themes (Guest, Bunce, & Johnson, 2006;Saunders et al., 2017). Ten interviewees were current, active, members of the groupwho play with the Women’s League regularly. To increase variation in the sample,interviews were also conducted with two people who had previously been active inthe group but no longer play soccer. Interviewees ranged in age from 28 to 60 yearsold, with most interviewees above the age of 40 (median age = 46). Intervieweesvaried in their tenure with the group. Some had been original members of theWomen’s League, others had only been in the group for a short time. Intervieweesalso varied in their level of soccer experience. Some interviewees joined the leaguehaving never played soccer before, others had decades of previous soccer experience.

Interviews were semi-structured and followed a standard protocol (Lindlof &Taylor, 2019). The protocol helped ensure that we elicited some consistent informa-tion from all participants that could help answer the research questions. However,the interviews themselves were very conversational and fluid, and the intervieweroften changed the order of questions, using them as prompts as needed, during theinterview. The questions were roughly based on the research question, but were alsoopen-ended enough to elicit a general sense of the participants’ meanings andexperiences. First, interviewees were asked to provide demographic information

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about themselves and to describe their past experience with sports. Interviewees werethen asked to describe their experience in the Women’s League through questionsabout their length of involvement with the group, how often they play, what it is liketo play with this group, how they feel about their experience, and how they woulddescribe the group to others. Interviewees were also asked about the boundaries ofWomen’s League and how the group relates to other groups or organizations. Thefinal set of questions asked interviewees about what they appreciate most about theWomen’s League and what challenges or limitations the group faces. Interviewslasted between 23–70 minutes (M = 39, SD = 11) and were held at a location of theinterviewee’s choice (in the local community center, a café, an interviewee’s office,etc.). Interviews were audio recorded, and later transcribed verbatim, resulting in180 single spaced pages of transcripts.

Additional data comes from documents collected for analysis. This data collectionamassed 80 total pages of documents. Collection began with documents about theWomen’s League itself. The group communicates through its Facebook page, whichhas a pinned post describing the group’s description and mission statement. Thereare also weekly announcements about games and some discussion posts and photosshared by members of the group. The mission statement and a sample of posts werecollected for analysis. Document collection continued outward from the Women’sLeague to gather information about the group’s context. The Women’s League isaffiliated with a local Community Soccer Organization (CSO), which offers a varietyof programs for youth and adults. Documents from CSO’s webpage include itsmission and program offerings, the rules for CSO’s co-ed adult recreational league,information about the teams and discussions about CSO games. Third, documentswere located by searching local newspaper online archives for all mentions of“soccer” in the time since the Women’s League was created.1 This search locateda feature story about the Women’s League written in 2011 and a letter to the editorresponding to the story. This search also provided news stories and letters aboutother regional soccer opportunities. The final step involved searching websites oforganizations identified in news stories.

Reflexivity

The analysis of interview and document data is deepened through the author’sextended participation in the group. As an interpretive researcher, I recognize that“we can never exist or work completely separate from the things we study” (Lindlof& Taylor, 2019, p. 12). I am reflective about my own involvement in the group andits complex relationship to the knowledge claims I advance in this work (Alvesson &Sköldberg, 2018). I am a longtime member of the Women’s League and have playedsoccer with the women in this group for seven years. During that time, I havetransitioned from being a newcomer (both to the league and the sport, having notplayed soccer since I was a child) to being one of the core members. I have spent wellover 1,000 hours playing soccer with this group and engaging in conversation about

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the Women’s League with group members. The nature of my participation in thegroup gives me an emic perspective from which to interpret the data. My embedd-edness in the group helps me understand the context of events described by inter-viewees, but it also poses some challenges.

To help mitigate the potential that I might unwittingly influence the interviewees,who know me quite well, I solicited help from a fellow researcher in the discipline ofRecreation Studies. This colleague has advanced-level soccer experience, having playedcompetitive soccer in high school and college, and has played with theWomen’s Leaguea handful of times. However, she does not know the group members very well. Sheconducted all of the interviews and helped provide some feedback on early stages of thispaper. This study only utilizes data from the interviews and documents describedabove, and my analytic process privileges the voices of the participants. However, mypersonal experiences with the group sensitizes me to its norms and values and aids myinterpretation of key events and activities noted by members.

Data analysis

I employed an abductive approach to qualitative methods to analyze and interpret data.Abductive analysis involves “recursively moving back and forth between a set of observa-tions and a theoretical generalization” (Tavory & Timmermans, 2014, p. 4). Abductionallows analysts to be open to developing emerging theoretical claims by tacking betweenempirical data, reflexivity, and theoretical knowledge. Unlike purely inductive or deduc-tive approaches, abductive inquiry requires a specific “attitude towards data and towardsone’s own knowledge: data are to be taken seriously, and the validity of previouslydeveloped knowledge is to be queried” (Reichertz, 2010, p. 6). The abductive process isevident in my coding choices, described below, and my efforts to be continually reflexiveabout how the developing categories were consistent with or challenged my previousknowledge of the group and of theories about groups and community.

Analysis began with data management of both documents and interview transcripts,and holistic coding to build familiarity with data (Lindlof & Taylor, 2019). FollowingSaldaña (2016), coding was done in cycles. First cycle coding focused on process,emotion, values, and in vivo codes because these are best match for research questionsthat involve “exploration of participant actions/processes and perceptions found withinthe data” (Saldaña, 2016, p. 70). This first cycle coding amassed hundreds of codes, suchas “emotion: fun,” “favorite thing to do all week,” “contrast with men” and “value: notshowing off.” I then used code mapping (Saldaña, 2016) to organize all of the preliminarycodes and collapse them into categories before moving into second cycle coding. Thismapping process led to nine categories including “Protecting ‘me time’,” “Negotiatingthe skill gap,” “Recruiting new members,” and “Supporting each other outside of soccer.”For the second coding cycle, I abductively engaged theoretical knowledge of community,sport, and group communication. I performed pattern coding and process coding withattention to the research question and bona fide group framework. This second cyclecoding led to the more fully developed themes presented in the findings section. These

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themes capture consistent patterns in the data, but also highlight ways in which inter-viewees presented varied and sometimes contradictory perspectives. Throughout, I keptanalytic memos about my process, personal reflections, and emerging interpretations, asrecommended by Saldaña (2016) and Lindlof and Taylor (2019).

I took several steps to help check interpretations and ensure rigorous qualitativeanalysis. First, I had triangulation in multiple forms of data (Lindlof & Taylor, 2019)and followed well-established, rigorous qualitative analysis procedures as describedabove. Second, I sought out disconfirming, negative cases in the data in order to testand deepen my emerging interpretations. Third, I substantially developed my analysisbased on ongoing feedback from peer review. This peer review included early conversa-tions with the colleague who had conducted interviews, and ongoing conversations withother academic peers who have some familiarity with the group. Finally, I shared thefindings with group members to check my understanding of events and to get theirfeedback on my interpretations. This member checking led me to revise my argumentabout the management of group boundaries by incorporating discussion of how playersnegotiated the skill gap and presenting more diverse perspectives than I had in earlierdrafts. These analytic strategies are important in abductive analysis because they helpchallenge the researcher’s initial interpretations and develop more complex, nuancedtheoretical claims.

Findings and discussion

Analysis reveals that thewomen involved in this group enact “community” in three distinctways, which highlight the connection between the group’s internal processes and theirmanagement of context and boundaries. First, groupmembers articulate a set of alternativevalues that guides their group and they structure their soccer playing around thosevalues. Second, they use discursive contrasts to describe their group history and situatetheir group within their larger context. Finally, they engage in what I call boundedinclusivity to manage their group boundaries. The following sections describe thesefindings and provide representative excerpts that highlight the consistent patterns fromthe data. These findings are discussed in light of relevant sport and group communicationresearch.

Enacting alternative values

The first way that thewomen enact their sport community is by articulating a specific set ofcore values and then structuring their soccer experience around those values. The valuesare most clearly articulated in Women’s League Mission Statement, which was collabora-tively written by members of the group. The Mission Statement begins with thedeclaration:

The mission of the Women’s League is to provide a fun, safe, empowering,collaborative environment for women in the [local] area to play soccer. Wewelcome players of all ability levels, from complete beginners to high-level players

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with experience on competitive teams. This league values group collaboration andlearning over competition and individual performance … Although we have manyskilled players, and we take our games seriously, our main goals are to have funtogether and help each other learn.

The mission defines the league’s core values as “friendship and fun,” “fairness,” “safety,”“compassion,” and “collaborative skill development.” Each value is explained with a fewsentences describing the norms of the league. Compassion is explained as, “We value allwomen who come to play, and we promote good sportswomanship as a way ofexpressing compassion and care for all players. The League encourages skill buildingwithin a friendly and collaborative community.”

Compassion is not a typical guiding principle in organized sports, but it is central tothe way that members of the Women’s League describe their group. Other values listedin this mission statement, such as safety, fun, and collaborative skill development, maybe consistent with values shared by other sport groups. However, the way the Women’sLeague players enact these values is atypical of most organized sports teams. One waythese values are enacted is through the team composition. Interviewees explained thatthe women play soccer in a pick-up style, meaning that team composition varies eachweek, depending on who is in attendance. AsEtta2 noted, “we switch it up.” Playerscreate the teams with the aim of having both teams relatively equal in skill levels, andplayers even switch teams partway through the games if one team is drastically out-performing the other. Second, because the teams change each week, there are no officialstanding or score keeping. Even though goals are scored, there is no declared winner atthe end of a game, and players celebrate whenever anyone scores a goal. Third, the groupself-officiates and will call their own fouls, determine which side gets the ball when itgoes out of bounds, and, as Sarah explained, will often give players a second chance atthings like corner kicks or throw ins if they are done incorrectly. These norms are vastlydifferent from typical soccer rules.

Although it is common for pick-up sports to include features such as self-officiating and ad hoc teams, members of the Women’s League enact these normsin ways that are closely connected to the group’s values, which the interviewees seeas gendered. For example, CSO players have regular pick up sessions in addition tothe scheduled co-ed league games. During these co-ed pick-up games, teams aretypically organized according shirt color, and there is very little attention paid toequalizing skill levels. The lack of a referee means that the group must self-officiate,which in this case, leads to a fast-paced, aggressively competitive style of play andfrequent disagreements about fouls. Although roughly half of the Women’s Leagueplayers also participate in CSO’s structured co-ed league games, none of themreported wanting to participate in CSO's pick-up games, which they describe asmore dangerous and aggressive than the co-ed league games. In contrast, intervie-wees describe the Women’s League’s pick-up games as consistent with the group’svalues.

Players also enact values such as friendship, safety, and compassion in moreinformal ways, by playing soccer in a style that is non-contact, emphasizes passingand teamwork, and prioritizes fun and safety more than scoring goals. All twelve

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interviewees discussed safety as important to their experience. One example of thiscomes from Sarah, a player in her late 40s who learned to play soccer when theWomen’s League began. She notes that in the Women’s League, “if we bump eachother, [we say] ‘Oh God, I’m sorry.’ And they stop and they help you up, they don’tcontinue to play.” Other interviewees described moments where someone fell downor seemed injured and everyone stopped playing to make sure the player was ok,despite there not being any clear foul that would normally stop play. In momentslike this, concern for safety and wellbeing of each other clearly trumped the officialrules of the game and the norm of continuing to play to the whistle.

These alternative values are also evident in the interviewees’ descriptions of their groupas a community. Kate described theWomen’s League as “the ‘Oh good job!’ crew, the verynurturing Sunday league,” which was a sentiment echoed by all interviewees. Jenny said,

People care about building the community here. They care about how did peoplefeel when they left. They care about, ‘did everybody get to touch the ball enough?’and ‘were the levels right?’ and ‘did we distribute the teams right?’ I think [the coremembers of the group] are always thinking about that stuff and that, to me, buildsthat community of people around the sport.

Jenny’s comments describe a community based on caring for all members. Thissense of care includes concern about process, such as attention to the distribution ofskills in the teams for the day or the attempts to make sure all women get to beactively involved in the play. But community also involves attention to the wellbeingof everyone in the group. Jenny continued,

Everybody has to get something from it or they won’t come back… . The other thingabout community is that you’re there with a smile. You enjoy the people, and it’s morepositive than any other emotion. There’s not anger, there’s not over-competitiveness,there’s not tearing each other down. So those are the positivity, the connectedness, thatthere’s something for everybody, that’s what makes this work.

These comments from group members show that they understood their group asa community that engages in the game of soccer in ways that support their corevalues of friendship, compassion, fun, and collaborative learning. The values articu-lated in the mission statement are evident in the way the women play soccer andsupport and validate each other on the field.

The women in this group also enact community in their interactions off the soccerfield. All of the interviewees mentioned having positive relationships with the otherwomen in the group, and nine of the twelve discussed how playing soccer togetherdeepened their relationships in other contexts. Interviewees noted that they demonstrategroup values of friendship and compassion by supporting each other in difficult times,such as collecting money to assist Kate when her house caught fire or providing mealsand support for Emily when she was diagnosed with cancer. Emily recounted,

I was diagnosed with a very serious illness about three years ago and this soccergroup was a main support. They would bring me fresh food and dinners and sendme text messages. One of the members knitted me hats for when I lost my hair …The soccer women’s group was one of my main supports for when I was sick.

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Some other members of the league are cancer survivors and were very active in talkingwith Emily about her diagnosis and treatment, supporting her throughout the process,going with her to medical appointments, and helping her family so Emily could rest.Emily slowly returned to league, even coming to play some times while she was still inrecovery, and players made extra efforts to be cautious and safe with her.

Perhaps the most striking example comes from Jordan, who relied on the Women’sLeague for emotional support as she went through a long and painful divorce process.Soon after they moved to town for his new job, Jordan’s husband announced that hewanted a divorce. One particularly difficult thing for Jordan was that her husband’ssister, a longtime resident of the town, used to play soccer and had introduced Jordan tothe Women’s League. Although her sister in law had not played much in recent years,and Jordan attended consistently, the stressful family situation left Jordan unsurewhether theWomen’s League players would support her. So, at first, Jordan was hesitantto tell group members about her situation. But then, Jordan said her sister in law,

came back and played once or twice, and then she testified in court that I washyper-competitive and she was afraid that I would hurt her. That I was dangerouson the soccer field. And that, other people had also expressed to her that they wereworrying about getting hurt when they played with me because I am so hyper-competitive in every aspect of my life. I told some of my closer friends in thesoccer league, and, you know, they did what friends do! They immediately startedteasing me about everything, all the time. (laughs)

Previous studies have found that sports teams use humor, such as teasing or nick-names, as a way to build community (Theberge, 1995; Zanin et al., 2016). In this case,Jordan appreciated the group’s use of humor as an indication of friendship, one of thegroup’s core values. In addition to supporting Jordan during the soccer games, playersfrom the league also testified on her behalf in the divorce court. One week when Jordanwasn’t at a game, Lucille organized a meeting of players to let them know about theaccusations against Jordan and ask about their experiences playing with her. In herinterview, Lucille explained how the group offered unanimous support.

Everyone was like, ‘What!?’ They were just all –It’s a woman thing, partly. She’sgetting shafted or someone’s trying to shaft her. We are a soccer-playing groupthat we love one another, and she’s a good, a strong woman. She’s a strong woman,she’s a good player. No, she’s not overly aggressive. No, she never injures anybody.

Lucille was able to recount the group’s support for Jordan during court testimony.Jordan’s emotional response to being cared for and supported by this group wasclear in the interview. She choked back tears as she said, “I don’t know, how do yourepay that? Right? Honestly, I don’t know if I would’ve made it through the last twoyears without the recreational soccer league, without everybody there.”

The women in this group describe their community in ways that resonate withscholarly understandings, such as Tönnies’ contention that community is character-ized by personal relationships and emotional connection. Arnett (1986) argues thatcommunity “can happen in groups and organizations when communication andliving together go beyond association and begin to permit a sense of commitment to

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both the people and the ideals of the organization” (p. 7). By clearly articulatinga mission and values, the Women’s League provides the foundation for groupmembers to build that sense of commitment. Moreover, the women enact theircommunity’s values both by structuring their group activities to promote thesevalues and by supporting each other in spaces outside of the group. In this way,this analysis helps highlight how community is enacted in both group processes andin communication outside the group.

Managing context through discursive contrasts

The bona fide group perspective directs our attention to the relationship betweena group’s internal processes, like the communication they use to enact community,and the way the group relates to its context (Putnam & Stohl, 1990). Contextualinterdependence is “multidimensional and waxes and wanes throughout a group’shistory” (Putnam et al., 2012, p. 214). Lammers and Krikorian (1997) argue that contextcan be observed through the group’s institutional history and the age of the group’s rolestructures. For the Women’s League this means looking not only at how the grouprelates to the social context and other soccer opportunities in the area, it also meansexploring how group members describe their group history. Members of the Women’sLeague enact their sport community by using discursive contrasts to describe their grouphistory and situate their group within their larger context. These contrasts are situatedwithin an ideological framework that recognizes hegemonic masculinity as the founda-tion for competitive sport and positions the Women’s League as an alternative. Tounpack this claim, I describe the group’s social and institutional context, then provide anexample of the contrast between “recreational” and “competitive” that anchors groupmembers’ depictions of their group’s context and history.

The Women’s League exists in a small, rural town with approximately 20,000 fulltime residents. The small-town context means that players in this group inevitably seeeach other in professional, social, or public settings. Some groupmembers are friends orneighbors who have a long relational history. Others are acquaintances whose maininteraction is on the soccer field, but they still see each other on occasion. As Etta noted,sometimes when she sees follow soccer players “out in public” she says “Oh, I recognizeyou. You look different with real clothes on.”

The town is also home to a mid-sized state university, which creates a kind ofcultural divide between “university people” and long-time residents, or “townies.”Documents collected for this study show that the university has a sizable population ofinternational students, many of whom are in graduate programs. This not only bringsmore racial and ethnic diversity than might be expected for a rural American smalltown, but also, given the game’s global popularity, helps support a vibrant soccercommunity. In this way, the Women’s League is just one part of a larger local soccerecosystem, which includes youth programs, university-sponsored intramural and clubteams, and co-ed adult leagues organized by CSO. Most CSO players are working

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adults, and registration logs for CSO’s co-ed teams show that at the time of this study,only 19 of the over 200 registered players were women.

The Women’s League began in 2010 as a place for women who were new to soccer ordid not want to play in a faster-paced competitive sports environment. It started small,then within a year it grew to four teams of 10–12 women, organized by a man whocoached local youth teams and trained referees for competitive and recreational games. By2012 the Women’s League had over 60 members, but eventually participation began todwindle. At its nadir, the league did not have enough players to consistently field two fullteams and some of the long-term players began to fear that it would completely collapse.In 2014, the players changed their group structure to be more self-organized, wrote themission statement quoted above, and shifted to the pick-up format they currently use.

When interviewees discussed the context and history of their league they did so usingdiscursive contrasts. The clearest contrast was between the ideas of “recreation” and“competition,” which was mentioned by all twelve interviewees. The women describedtheir league as recreational, which they always defined in contrast to the idea ofcompetition. Consider, for example, Etta’s comments about her early experiences withthe league. Etta is a 58-year-old player whose first soccer experience was in the women’sleague, which she joined at age 52. Etta was invited to play soccer by some women sheknew fromWeight Watchers. Etta said her friends told her, “You really need to try this.This is so much fun. It’s purely recreational … It doesn’t matter if you’ve never playedsoccer.” Looking back on that statement Etta laughed and said “yeah, right.” Shedescribed her first experience with the Women’s League as overly competitive.

Even though it was billed as recreational, there were organized teams. In fact, therewas one team that was so organized one of the husbands was the coach. Theypracticed during the week! I work during the week. I just want to show up to kickthe ball around. And, it got pretty intense there for a while, and I started gettingintimidated … Some of the women on the other team they would do what I guessyou do in a competitive soccer game, you say things that are intimidating to theother player. And I go, ‘I really don’t have time for this.’ … I just didn’t like beingtalked to that way on the field. I’m too old to be talked to that way on the field.

Etta’s story construes competition in two ways. First, it contrasts the expected behaviorin “competitive soccer games” with her own expectations of the league as “recreational,”and suitable for beginners. In this way, competition is seen as related to skill level orexpertise. However, she also describes competitiveness as “intimidating” other players orbeing “intense,” which are negative things that she experienced as aggression.

For Etta, the structure of predetermined teams heightened the negative aspects ofcompetition. Now, in the restructured league, Etta notes, “there’s not that cut-throatcompetitiveness that was there originally. There was nothing recreational aboutthose leagues there.” Other interviewees also described their group as “recreational”and contrasted their experiences in the league with competition. Like Etta, theylinked this contrast to the point in the group’s history where the league shifted frompre-set teams to playing pick-up. Tara, a regular player who has been with the leaguesince its inception, said she enjoyed being part of a close-knit team, but found thathaving the teams in the Women’s League became problematic. Part of the challenge,

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Tara notes, has to do with the group context. Because they live in a small town,participants in the league are often friends and neighbors. But, on the soccer fieldthey engaged in a kind of competition that made Tara uncomfortable.

It’s one thing when you’re on a team and you’re playing people you don’t reallyknow and you never really see again. It’s a lot easier to compete and feel like you’repart of that team. But when you’re playing against people you know and you seeand you like, it’s really conflicting.

Tara described this as “stressful and off putting … a weird dynamic of competingand being all for my team against people that I know.” Now, the group is “lesscompetitive, more cohesive.”

Some of the more experienced soccer players talked about competitiveness ina less negative way. For example, Liz also mentioned those team practices in theearly days of the Women’s League. Unlike Etta, however, Liz saw team practices aspositive because they showed that players were taking the game seriously. Liz,Jordan, and Jenny described themselves as “competitive” people and discussed howthey take a more competitive approach when they play in the co-ed league. Theseplayers’ descriptions of competition are similar to professional female soccer playerswho construct their athlete identity as distinct from normal or stereotypical women(Meân & Kassing, 2008). Even though their views of the value of competition variedfrom the other interviewees, they still contrasted recreational and competitive playand positioned this contrast as central to the Women’s League community.

The contrast between recreational and competitive was seen as gendered. AsJordan laughed, the Women’s League is “laid back,” “fun,” and has “less testoster-one.” Eleven out of the twelve interviewees described the Women’s League incontrast to CSO’s co-ed league,3 which they characterized as male dominated. Forexample, Sarah described the Women’s League as “very different from co-ed” andsaid that one time in the co-ed game “I got a concussion from a guy playing mean.”Maria, who has played co-ed soccer since she was in elementary school, said she nolonger likes playing with men because of bad experiences with male players. Shedescribed the Women’s League as playing “for the love of the game.” In contrast, theco-ed league was hyper competitive and dangerous.

I’ve heard way too many people, especially women, getting nailed and hurt with theguys, with the men, I mean the co-ed team. By the end of the season, guys were justgoing after each other and taking themselves out. I’m like, “Geez! I mean, seriously.What happened to ‘no contact’ here?” … We’re not going for the World Cup!

Maria’s description of the co-ed league shows she sees it as male dominated andphysically dangerous. Another interviewee, Lucille, observed that the masculinity ofthe co-ed league also has an emotional dimension. At age 60, Lucille is one of theoldest players in the local soccer community. She started playing soccer in her fortiesand was one of the founding members of the Women’s League. Lucille described theco-ed league as characterized by “a lot of sniping and criticizing … . Because theguys are like, ‘The field of soccer, blah blah.’ ‘When I played it, blah blah’ and it’s justall this –I mean, I love men, but sometimes they’re kind of obnoxious about this sort

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of thing.” Jenny agreed that the men do a lot of arguing. She laughed, “I’m alwaysamazed in the co-ed league. I just want to come out and play. Right? This doesn’thave to be that hard!”

These comments show how interviewees view the co-ed league as hyper masculineand link that masculinity to aggression and competition. As Maria commenteddismissively, the guys “want to win or want to prove themselves or whatever.” Theplayers of the Women’s League described their community, based on friendship, fun,compassion, and safety, in contrast to that negative view of masculinity. This distinc-tion echoes findings by sport literature that women’s sport is viewed as more colla-borative and community-based than men’s. Participants’ descriptions of CSO’s co-edleague demonstrate hegemonic masculinity noted in sport communication research(Meân & Kassing, 2008) and highlight challenges women face in co-ed sport leaguessuch as fear of injury or feeling that their contributions are not taken seriously by maleplayers (Wachs, 2003). This contrast between “recreational” and “competitive” allowsmembers of the Women’s League to define their group in terms of its core values andto show how their group differs from CSO’s co-ed league.

This discursive contrast also allows the group to define itself in relation to its past.Lammers and Krikorian (1997) argue that group context can be observed by lookingfor transitions and temporal midpoints. Women’s League members frequently notedthat the switch from predefined teams to pick-up was important in creating a more“recreational” league. This transition helped maintain the group’s existence andcreated a new role structure, which Lammers and Krikorian define as “formal posi-tions and stable functional relations among roles” (p. 25). This transition removedformal teams and team captains, and created a community where the responsibilityand power are more distributed. Women’s League players viewed this power sharingas part of being “recreational” because it meant that all members were responsible fortaking care of each other, playing in a way that is safe, and showing compassion.

Managing borders through bounded inclusivity

The final way that group members enact community in the Women’ League is tomanage their group borders. The bona fide group perspective orients scholarlyattention to group boundaries by posing questions about who is in the group, howpeople enter or exit, and how members communicate across group borders. In thisstudy, interviewees reported that they often invite new women to join their group bydescribing it as “very inclusive” and welcoming of women of all ages and experiencelevels. Group members also validate and support each other, which supports theirdescription of the group as inclusive. But, the group manages its borders carefullyand this inclusivity is bounded by tangible limits.

I call these efforts bounded inclusivity, which builds on concepts of both boundedrationality (Simon, 1976) and bounded emotionality (Mumby & Putnam, 1992).Simon argued that people are not purely rational in making decisions. Rather,their rationality is constrained by limitations such as time, their own knowledge,

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and the tractability of the problem. Because of these limitations, people use heuristicsand contextual cues to seek satisfactory solutions. Mumby and Putnam critique theidea of bounded rationality and offer the concept of bounded emotionality as analternative mode of organizing. They shift the idea of bounded to refer to the“intersubjective constraints that individuals must exercise in a community” andargue that “boundedness” is not synonymous with limitations. Rather, because“individuals are constrained by their responsiveness to others,” boundedness is “anecessary condition for understanding organizational experiences” (Mumby & Put-nam, 1992, p. 474). In the Women’s League, group members highly value beinginclusive and welcoming. But, because of their commitment to the values of thecommunity and their responsiveness to each other, this inclusivity is necessarilybounded and influences how they negotiate their group borders.

Bounded inclusivity is evident in how the group helps players feel welcome andincluded. All twelve of the interviewees commented that the relationships with otherwomen in the league were very important to them, and eight of them commentedthat they actively recruit more women to come play with the group. Intervieweesremembered feeling “intimidated” when they initially joined the group, but notedthat developing relationships with the other women helped them feel welcome. Ettaobserved that these relationships often develop through informal conversations.

While we are putting on our shin guards and our cute little long socks we will havea conversation. And little by little things will come out. I still don’t know what all thewomen do in terms of a career or anything, but we start telling stories about ourselves.Someone will ask how you’re doing and they actually share how they’re doing.

Etta’s observation echoes Theberge’s (1995) claim that conversation in the changingroom is crucial to building a team’s sense of community. In the early Women’sLeague, however, this informal conversation tended to be within each smaller teamrather than across the group as a whole. Etta describes a pivotal shift for her feelingof inclusion after the group changed to a more informal, pick-up style of play.

I got to a point where I started learning the names of everybody, not just thepeople on my team, and it was a real rush sometimes when they’ll say “Etta, I’mglad to see you, I’m glad you’re here.” Or “I wish you were on my team this time,we didn’t get to play together today.” … So, the sense that I’m actually welcome,which was a major difference than the beginning, when I felt like I was in the way.You know, I was just in the way.

For Etta, names were meaningful in helping build community because they indicateda personal relationship and sense of connection. Etta’s story shows how the Women’sLeague players include each other through supportive communication, relationshipbuilding, and validating new or less experienced players in ways that help them feelwelcome.

However, this inclusivity has some clear constraints. First, the league is only for women.The women vary in age, skill level, race, religion, profession, family status, and sexualorientation, but they all identify as female. This is a very firm boundary characteristic thatallows the group to create a community where members are relatively free from

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obligations associated with their gender identity that might otherwise occupy their timeand mental energy. Interviewees described their Sunday evenings with the Women’sLeague as “me time” where they can, as Tara said, just be together with “no kids, nowork, no thoughts in my head.” Three of the group members reflected that it can bechallenging for women to prioritize their own needs. For example, Jordan lamented howeasy it is for women to feel “isolated.” Being in theWomen’s League helped her recognize,

I can’t be a good parent and I amnot as good a person if I am not taking care ofmyself.And having that time where I can laugh and joke with other people and feel connectedto a community, as well as staying in shape and getting all of those other benefits,makes me better for the entire rest of the week. And so, it has to be a priority.

Lucille described the struggle to set aside time for oneself as “a gender thing. Womenoften will put what their kids are doing first and not find time for something likethis. I often feel like, no. They need to find a way to make it work.” This desire for“me time” was clear across all the interviews. Despite the fact that many groupmembers learned soccer from their male partners or played co-ed soccer, theyexpressed a clear need for a separate space to play with other women.

This need for “me time” resonates with scholarship on communities and women’sgroups. Kanter’s (1972) classic studies on utopian communities demonstrates thatgroups seeking an alternative to mainstream society create separate spaces, structures,and norms. Feminist scholars argue that women’s groups allow members to create“alternative discourse communities” (Ashcraft & Mumby, 2004) that resist patriarchalstructures. Studies of women’s groups (Wyatt, 1988) and women’s sports teams(Theberge, 1995, Zanin et al., 2016) demonstrate that spaces that are exclusively forwomen can empower group members and allow them to create identities that resisttraditional gender roles. In the Women’s League, this separation allowed members toalso create an alternative community where they could prioritize themselves and theirgroup over family, work, or other obligations of their everyday lives.

Sometimes women in this group actively enforced this border by telling husbands,boyfriends, and family members to stay away. For example, Kate participated in thewomen’s league briefly at the request of her husband, a former semi-professionalsoccer player who hoped that she would develop a similar love for the game. Katedescribed how the presence of her husband watching affected her playing experience.

He’s got that competitive drive. He would come sometimes and that almost took thefun out. He’s looking for me and he’s shouting, ‘Oh! do this!’ And I’m like, ‘Come on,stop.’ (laughs) So, I told him I will go back and play if you never, ever come back.

Other interviewees shared similar stories. Some of the women even attributed theWomen’s League past challenges to men’s influences. Even though the group wasfounded by a man who many women learned from and had positive experienceswith, there is also a sentiment that the presence of men was bad for the league. Etta’sstatements above about her first experience indicated that one of the reasons theleague was too competitive early on was because a “husband” was a coach. Jennymade a similar observation when she laughed, “I think there was a time when the

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league of four teams had some personality challenges. One of the teams, the dadswould come and were being, like, bad dads. And it created drama.”

Although it seems likely that the male partners who attended Women’s Leaguegames saw themselves as expressing support for their loved ones, players construedthe enthusiastic shouting of advice by men on the sidelines as aggressive andunwanted. Sport communication scholars have reported on the strong influenceon discourses of masculinity in organized sports such as soccer (Adams, Anderson,& McCormack, 2010; Meân & Kassing, 2008). In this context, having men show theirsupport through enacting typical sports behavior was seen by several group membersas inappropriate and a threat to the women’s enactment of their own community.The men’s presence, even as fans, was a threat to the group’s boundary. By distan-cing themselves from their male family members, significant others, and friends, themembers of the women’s league create a gendered boundary for their communitythat excludes men and reaffirms their women-centered values.

Bounded inclusivity in this group also means that players are welcome andincluded only if they play within the preferred style of the group. One majorchallenge this group faces is negotiating the skill gap among players. Because theplayers vary so much in soccer experience, it can be difficult to maintain a style ofplay that is satisfying and enjoyable for all. All twelve interviewees noted the skilldifference among players in the league and Lucille captured this dilemma when sheobserved that the group is “so inclusive” that they “can’t elevate” the quality of thegames. Tara similarly commented, “we want to encourage new people, but we alsowant to play good soccer.”

This dilemma is most clearly seen in the discussion of the more experienced players.Jenny grew up playing soccer, joining her first club team when she was in third grade,and played in both high school and on a club team in college. Jenny continued to findoutlets for soccer playing throughout her adult life and, at age 45, is captain of one ofthe teams in CSO’s co-ed league. She describes herself as, “a very sports competitiveperson” who loves to play and wants to share the sport with others. “Now in my adultlife, If I don’t play soccer, something is missing and I’m cranky and irritable.” Jennydescribes how the style of play in the women’s league can be challenging for experi-enced players.

I have women friends who I play co-ed with who don’t come to this because it’snot competitive enough for them. And, you know, you do have to ease up. Right?There are certain players I’m not going to go as hard, you know, that’s not theright thing to do. But I have a handful of friends who say “that’s not for me.”

Jenny’s comments are echoed by Liz, age 28, who commented, “I would say I’mcompetitive across the board. I think that with theWomen’s League, my biggest struggleis trying not to be competitive. Because it’s just not what it’s for.” Liz and Jenny are twoof the most highly skilled players who are core members of the Women’s League. Whenteams are created for the day, Jenny and Liz are often the anchors for the teams, acting asleaders to distribute the ball and help other players have success. They are bothenthusiastic members of the Women’s League who have very positive things to say

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about the group and come almost every week. Yet, they work hard to maintain a style ofplay that is personally fulfilling and also appropriate for the group.

Bounded inclusivity in this group highlights two challenges. First, the groupstruggles to keep consistent numbers of players. Interviewees described how main-taining the group as a separate space, or “me time,” can be challenging and since thegames are informal they may feel less obligated to attend. Some weeks there are 18-20 players. But, other weeks have as few as six or eight participants, so the womenplay with very small teams of three or four players. This is a challenge to thesustainability of the group. Second, negotiating the skill gap among players can bedifficult and the Women’s League is sometimes presented as less serious or legit-imate than the co-ed league. This is evident in the interviewees’ discussions of howthey try to recruit new members by telling them the Women’s League is welcoming,fun, low key, “drama free,” and safe for beginners. As Jenny noted, if a potential newplayer was “hesitant to play or worried” about their skill level, she should come tothe Women’s League. But, co-ed would be better if the player had “a skill set thatmaybe has a higher need to feed … or wants something more competitive.”

Arnett argues that the idea of community involves “a triple focus on self, other,and the principles of the organization, which must be held in creative tension” (1986,p. 16). Jenny and Liz’s discussion of the skill gap shows how they negotiate thistension as they participate in the Women’s League. The requirement that play becollaborative and inclusive places limits on more experienced players, which createsa barrier to group membership. This barrier contains the idea of inclusivity in thegroup and shapes the group’s boundaries. As Cohen (1985) indicates, all commu-nities have boundaries, which are indicative of the group identity and createdthrough social interaction. In the Women’s League, this boundary is enacted throughan emphasis on inclusivity that is carefully crafted based on separation and negotia-tion of skill in order to be responsive to group members’ needs.

Conclusion

This study draws on the bona fide group perspective and research on life enrichmentgroups to show how a women’s recreational soccer group creates a community thatresists traditional models of sport. The members of the Women’s League enact com-munity through communicating alternative group values such as friendship, compas-sion, and equality. These values are evident in the way the group structures theiractivities (setting up teams, not keeping score, etc.) and through their communicationboth on and off the field. They manage context by defining their group throughdiscursive contrasts that portray the group as “recreational” and an alternative tohegemonic masculinity. Finally, they negotiate group boundaries through boundedinclusivity, which simultaneously welcomes new members and protects their groupborders.

This work indicates a need for more attention to recreational sports groups,particularly women’s groups. It also has implications for the study of other life

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enrichment groups. In a time where critics decry the loss of community because ofthe societal rise in individualism and isolation (Putnam, 2000), studying life enrich-ment groups can enhance our understanding of how people collaboratively createand maintain a sense of community. The strategies used by Women’s Leaguemembers may be relevant in other life enrichment groups, particularly those pro-moting alternative values or orienting toward community change.

As with any study, this research has some limitations. For instance, this studydoes not investigate the embodied experience of aging or how women’s sportexperiences are shaped by societal narratives of decline related to age, which isclearly relevant for this group. Future research on this, or similar groups, couldinvestigate this topic. Additionally, there are notable critiques of the concept ofcommunity as being overly reliant on agreement—such that dissent is stronglydiscouraged (Arnett, 1986; Cohen, 1985; Young, 1995)—or as a utopian ideal thathas limited ability to produce meaningful social change because it is too separatefrom mainstream society (Young, 1995). Although this was not the central focus ofthis project, future work could explore the limitations of groups such as theWomen’s League in terms of discouraging dissent or reinforcing stereotypes ofwomen as weaker or noncompetitive. It would be worthwhile to explore what isgained and lost by organizing women’s sports as separated from men’s, particularlyin a recreational context.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author. The author would like tothank the members of the Women's League for sharing their stories for this researchand taking time to offer feedback on earlier drafts. Thanks also go to Dr. SheriHuckleberry for assistance with the interviews and to the Patton College of Educa-tion at Ohio University supporting Dr. Huckleberry's participation in this research.Finally, the author, along with other members of the Women's League, mourn theuntimely passing of Tad Albano, who founded the Women's League in 2010. We aregrateful to Tad for his vision in starting this group and inspiring so many in theregion to participate in the beautiful game.

Notes

1. The overwhelming majority of these news stories reported the results of local high schoolvarsity soccer games. I noted that this was the case but did not collect all of these storiesfor analysis since the particular aspects of these high school games were exogenous tothis study.

2. To protect confidentiality, the names of all participants and potentially identifying organi-zations reported in this paper are pseudonyms.

3. The only interviewee who did not make this comparison was Lily, who joined the Women’sLeague as a newcomer to the sport and eventually stopped coming after an injury. She hadno co-ed soccer experience and did not talk about the co-ed league.

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