Growing up, I didn’t have a choice of whether or not to play sports. This is not the reality for most people. I picked this topic because I’ve always loved sports. I’ve played so many different sports at varying points in my life finally ending with playing varsity for four sports in high school. And now, I play varsity women’s rugby at Bowdoin. Growing up, there was always time, money, and energy for my parents to spend to put in me sports. This is a privilege I’ve definitely taken for granted. As soon as I could walk and run by myself, my parents put me in any and every single sport or club in town they could. When I later asked my mother why she did that, she said she wanted me to be able to try everything so I could decide on what I really wanted to pursue. (Side note: this actually echoes one of my peer reviewed articles. Go read the synthesis of it here.) Then, in high school, my upper-class private school required each student to play a sport every season. So, I’ve always been exposed to physical education and have definitely reaped the benefits of that privilege.

My main challenge when creating this website was finding all the grassroots organizations. It was definitely hard to distinguish between a true grassroots organization and a program that was created for profit to encourage sports in communities. Because sports are such a popular thing (and definitely a cause people love donating to), there were a lot of fake grassroots organizations out there. I think I did a pretty good job but I’m definitely unsure about a few of them.

Another challenge was finding the peer reviewed and practitioner oriented articles. There’s no lack of research and articles out in the world that focus on sports and physical education, but it was difficult to determine what qualified as a peer reviewed article and what qualified as a practitioner oriented article. However, I’m pretty sure my four articles are correctly placed in the categories they are put in.

I learned a lot about grassroots organizing through this project. Something interesting I’ve learned is that sports are one of the easier things for people to rally behind. I think especially in comparison to something like music, sports are more general and popular. Everyone can probably name ten major sports team, but it’s harder to name ten major musicians. It’s also I think something more people are involved in. For example, look at Bowdoin. Our football team is really not good (a 100% losing record this past season). Despite this, through different donations, the college has the ability to build a brand new turf for the team over the summer, totaling to a grand price tag of eight million dollars. I hate to repeat myself, but the money for this eight million dollar field was, according to the college, entirely collected through donations. Sports are exciting and energetic, and even for those who aren’t playing; everyone is involved whether through actual playing or cheering. Sports are easy to rally behind so that definitely helped me in my search because there are so many programs out there trying to improve and provide physical education in public schools. This research definitely gave me some hope for the future of the physical education program in America.

Overall, I’m really happy I chose this topic to explore for my website. I learned a lot about grassroots organizations (especially how to spot a fake one). Honestly, the sheer amount of people and programs that just want to improve physical education for disadvantaged youth really made me happy. It’s also cool to see Bowdoin involved in these kinds of things. One of the first grassroots organizations I found is Grassroot Soccer (go read my description of it here). Oddly enough, a few days after I put it in my website, I read an email from a Bowdoin coach explaining an event that was coming up. The Bowdoin men’s and women’s soccer teams were partnering with Grassroot Soccer for a soccer tournament with Brunswick kids. I thought it was really cool that Bowdoin collaborates with organizations like Grassroot Soccer to interact with the greater Brunswick community and help kids explore a new sport. Finally, I’m really happy with the way this website turned out and hopefully, it helps someone learn more about physical education through grassroots organizations.