Highland Games as serious leisure: becoming a Masters athlete

ABSTRACT

In a context of successful ageing discourse, a growing number of older adults are turning to competitive sport. The phenomenon known as Masters sport is a form of serious leisure that challenges stereotypes of ageing. Contemporary research has explored how individuals become Masters athletes in a variety of sports, focusing upon on the mainstream sports of running, swimming and tennis. Research has yet to explore how people become involved in activities that have less universal appeal. This article begins filling this gap by examining how Masters athletes became involved in the Highland Games, a sport contextualised by its links to Scotland and its diaspora. A pragmatic theoretical approach lending from three existing models is used to make sense of how people enter the Games. Drawing on semi-structured life history interviews with 19 Masters athletes, this case study details two pathways to the Highland Games. The article describes how, unlike previous research, most athletes enter the sport later in life and are either drawn to competition through an emergent identification with Scotland or a diversification of bodily dispositions that existed before Games participation. The article concludes that theoretical flexibility is required to understand better the socio-cultural factors that influence Masters sport participation.

KEYWORDS:

• Masters
• serious leisure
• sport
• Highland Games
• Scotland

Acknowledgments

I wish to thank the anonymous reviewers for their comprehensive feedback, which have made this paper significantly stronger. I also thank Emmanuelle Tulle, John Harris and Fiona Skillen for their support as supervisors for the PhD project that led to the writing of this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Alma mater refers to the university or college that an individual attended.

Additional information

Funding

This research emanates from a PhD project that was funded by Glasgow Caledonian University.

Notes on contributors

James Bowness

James Bowness is a sociologist of sport and physical activity. He completed his PhD at Glasgow Caledonian University in 2017. He currently works as an Effective Learning Adviser within the Learning Enhancement and Academic Development Service at the University of Glasgow.