Recreational Sport: Program Design, Delivery, and Management

There are more opportunities than ever for employment in recreational sport, which means the need to prepare students with a solid foundation of the design, delivery, and management of recreational sport has never been more critical.

Recreational Sport is designed precisely with that need in mind. This text provides a contemporary perspective of recreational sport management, offering a comprehensive picture of recreational sport management for people in or entering all sectors of recreation and leisure, including public, nonprofit, private, and commercial.

“We saw a need for broad-based recreational sport programming that reflects the myriad of recreational sport activities and opportunities that are out there,” says lead author Robert Barcelona. “To meet those increased needs and interests, people need to have an array of programming and management skills in recreational sport.”

Barcelona and his coauthors help readers gain those skills in part by simplifying the complicated process of designing and delivering programs in various settings in recreation and leisure services. They present a macrocosm view of recreational sport in communities—a view that reflects the most current, application-based research in the field.

Their text places recreational sport squarely in the middle of the recreation and leisure curriculum and is supported by the recreational sport core competencies as developed by Barcelona himself. Those competencies are based on what recreational sport managers need to know and be able to do to grow and succeed in the profession, and they connect with the NIRSA recreational sport competencies developed in 2013.

In addition, Recreational Sport offers the following:

• Coverage for all age groups and sectors in a range of settings and contexts for recreational sport

• International perspectives to offer students great insights into career opportunities

• The latest theory, research, and real-world approaches to help both students and professionals who program sports

• Case studies of real-world issues in recreational sport and examples of theory-to-practice applications

The text comes with an array of online ancillaries that will prove invaluable to both instructors and students. The instructor guide supports and extends the chapter content and offers numerous ideas for learning activities, projects, and topics for papers. It also supplies chapter summaries, glossary terms, and links to websites that contain information for both instructors and students. The test package has multiple-choice, true–or-false, matching, and short–answer questions that can interface with learning management systems, and the presentation package offers a visual overview of the material to help students retain the concepts.

“In teaching recreational sport for many years, I know that students first need to grasp the big picture of recreational sports,” Barcelona says. “We deliver that big picture in addition to information on design, delivery, and management that every student needs to know to succeed, regardless of what recreational sport organization he or she is a part of.”

That big-picture element, along with the cutting-edge information on program design, delivery, and management,, sets this book apart. In the three parts of the book, students will be able to do the following:

• Be grounded in the philosophical concepts that define the field

• Learn about the core competencies they need to know to deliver successful programs and events

• Gain insights about the settings and contexts where recreational sport happens and learn about key ideas, issues, and career opportunities in the field

Recreational Sport is a textbook critical to students’ future success in recreational sport management, offering the big-picture view of the field while offering practical guidance in and real-world examples of successful design, delivery, and management of recreational sport programming.

Robert Barcelona, PhD, is an associate professor in the University of New Hampshire’s department of recreation management and policy. He teaches courses in recreational sport management, youth development, and organizational administration and leadership for both undergraduate and graduate students.

Since 1999 Barcelona has worked with numerous recreation and sport organizations in both programming and research efforts. His teaching interests focus on recreational sport management and youth development leadership in school and community-based settings. Barcelona’s research examines recreation and sport as developmental contexts for youth and focuses on the ways that recreation and sport organizations build healthy and sustainable programs and communities. His research has been published in numerous national and international publications, and he has authored several book chapters on recreation and sport management. He is one of the authors for Leisure Services Management.

Barcelona has won teaching excellence awards at both Indiana University and the University of New Hampshire. He is active with youth sport coach training through his involvement with CoachSmartNH, and he is engaged in recreation planning, consulting, and program evaluation projects with community recreation and youth development organizations throughout the United States.

Mary Sara Wells, PhD, is an associate professor in the University of Utah’s department of parks, recreation, and tourism. She teaches courses in youth development, community recreation, and sport management.

Since 2004 Wells has researched sportsmanship issues in youth sport. She has published her research in numerous journals, presented at several national and international conferences, and conducted trainings and evaluations for multiple municipal youth sport agencies across the country.

Skye Arthur-Banning, PhD, is an associate professor at Clemson University in the department of parks, recreation and tourism management. He teaches graduate and undergraduate classes in sport management and sport for development as well as in the core curriculum, and he advises graduate students in amateur sport for community and youth development.

Arthur-Banning’s research focus is in amateur sport and specifically on sport for development, ethical behavior in sport, and sportsmanship as it relates to coaches, players, parents, and referees. He has published in numerous journals and has done work with or presented for various organizations, including the Canadian Coaches Association, United States Soccer Federation, United States Navy Child and Youth Program, and various city, county, and state or provincial recreation agencies across North America and East Africa.

Arthur-Banning has been certified by the NCAA and US Soccer Federation as a national referee emeritus, national assessor, and national instructor. He draws on those amateur and semiprofessional sport experiences. Finally, he has worked with several international sport organizations to organize programs, make connections, and take students on various study-abroad trips using sport as a tool for youth and community development.