Sport and recreation in the United States

Contents:

Introduction                                                                                    3

1.                 SPORT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE USA                          4

                        Historical background, names of national sports, borrowed games     4

1.1.          Problems and prospects of American sport                                       6

2.                 THE VARIETY OF AMERICAN SPORTS                                     9

2.1.           Professional sport                                                                           9

2.1.1.   The business of sport                                                                      9

2.1.2.   Major sports                                                                                   10

2.1.2.1.                   Baseball and business                                                            10

2.1.2.2.                   Basketball                                                                              12

2.1.2.3.                   Football: an American spectacle                                             13

2.1.2.4.                   Bowling                                                                                 15

2.1.3.   Problems in professional sport                                                                 16

2.1.4.   Olympic Games and the names of American heroes                         17

2.2.          Leisure sports                                                                                17

2.2.1.   Badminton                                                                                     17

2.2.2.   Bowling                                                                                         20

2.3.          Sports for the disabled                                                                   21

2.4.          Women in sports                                                                            22

2.4.1.   Women and traditional sports and games                                         23

2.4.2.   Women’s sport in the 19^th century                                                   24

2.4.3.   Challenging gendered boundaries                                                     25

2.4.4.   The age of modern sports                                                               26

3.                 RECREATION IN THE USA                                                         29

3.1.          Sports at colleges                                                                           30

3.1.1.   College and sport                                                                            30

3.1.2.   Sport and money                                                                            31

3.1.3.   Women's Collegiate Sport                                                               32

3.1.4.   Intramural and club sports                                                       32

3.2.          Animals in sport                                                                     32

3.3.          Unusual sports                                                                        33

3.4.          Camps                                                                                   33

CONCLUSION                                                                               35

LITERATURE                                                                                36

INTRODUCTION

Nowadays a lot of people are getting more and more ambitious and now the always hurry somewhere, they are eager to do everything and are afraid of losing any minute that can bring them happiness, joy, glory or just money. But if they want to get that all, they’d better have wonderful mood all the time, perfect health, steel nerves and strong will. At present sport is the very thing that can help any person either keep fit or reach all his aims.

In my course paper I’m going to investigate almost all kinds of sport that can be popular famous in the USA, both professional and amateur ones.

There probably are countries where the people are as crazy about sports as they are in America, but I doubt that there is any place where the meaning and design of the country is so evident in its games. In many odd ways, America is its sports. The free market is an analog of on-the-field competition, apparently wild and woolly yet contained by rules, dependent on the individual's initiative within a corporate (team) structure, at once open and governed.

Sport plays a major role in American society as it accounts for the most popular form of recreation. Many Americans are involved in sports - either as a participant or as a spectator. Amateur sports distinguish between recreational and competitive sports. Favorite recreational activities include hiking, walking, boating, hunting, and fishing. All of these are liked for the recreational value as well as for exercise. But there are also many other sports activities in America which attract millions of participants for personal enjoyment, the love of competition and for the benefits of fitness and health. In addition, sport teaches social values like teamwork, sportsmanship, self-discipline, and persistence that are highly regarded in U.S. society.

So the main tasks of my course paper are to learn how sport influences on health and culture of the Americans, to find out all problems and prosperities of American sport and to figure out how many people of various classes, ages, nationalities and races, which live in the USA, are involved in playing games.

The first chapter of this course paper contains the information that shows us the stages of gradual development of American sport, beginning from Puritans’ times till our days. Different kinds of problems and prosperities that very often can appear in sport are also discussed here. In the second chapter any can find the information about great variety of sports that are played and watched on TV through the whole USA. Here I also give some data about participating women and the disabled in contests and competitions. The third chapter tells us about sport as about the main sourse for recreation.

So the whole course paper is dedicated to the sport in the USA, its development and influence on American life.

1.                SPORT AND ITS DEVELOPMENT IN THE USA

1.1.         Historical background, names of national sports, borrowed games

Whatever else sports may mean or be, their present-day prosperity represents a repudiation of the hostility toward games and enjoyment codified in the law books of the first settlers. The colonies' early rulers, north and south, were dedicated to rooting out play and enforcing the discipline of hard work as a moral value in itself and as a frontier necessity. The Puritans' war against sports may be traced to their equation of work with prayer and their belief that divine election was accompanied by an easy rejection of idleness; as members of England's rising middle class, the Puritans also had a social bias against the traditional amusements of the aristocracy. Today's fascination with the moral significance of winning, with the accompanying neglect of the play element in sports, may be an atavistic survival of this Puritan outlook—although the win-at-any-cost ethic is no less in evidence in countries with no Puritan heritage. Then again, the sheer number of seventeenth century laws against sports must also mean that games were very popular in colonial .America.

Throughout the colonies the old English sports like wrestling and footraces seem to have been present, although cockfighting and horse racing were not permitted in New England. Sledding and ice skating were also popular where the climate permitted; ice skating remained one form of physical exercise allowed women when the mores of the Vic

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