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This study examined the moderating effects of academic timing on the relative age effect in men's and women's U Sports (formerly Canadian Interuniversity Sports) volleyball. Interuniversity sport exists within an academic setting and encompasses different age groups within a single team, making it necessary to account for the academic timing of student athletes when studying the relative age effect. To be considered “on-time,” a student athlete's birthdate and expected athletic eligibility status must coincide, while a “delayed” student athlete will have an athletic eligibility corresponding with a younger cohort. We collected birthdates and eligibility years from the U Sports eligibility certificates of 2,780 male and 3,715 female athletes for the years 2006–2007 through 2013–2014; we then classified athletes as either on-time or delayed. We used a chi-square (χ2) goodness-of-fit tests to compare the observed distributions of student athletes' actual versus “expected” births across each quartile. Our analyses demonstrated an advantage for athletes born in the first half of the selection year. These results suggest that delaying entry into university may help equalize the playing field for relatively younger athletes wishing to compete in U Sports volleyball.

ABSTRACTRelative age effects (RAE) are developmental advantages experienced by those born in the initial months after a predetermined cut-off date over their younger counterparts. Student-athletes are considered to be “on-time” when their current year of athletic eligibility coincides with their expected year of athletic eligibility, based on their year of birth. Conversely, student-athletes are considered “delayed” when their current athletic eligibility year corresponds with a younger cohort. This study examined the impact of the RAE and academic timing on participation within nine of the 12 Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) championship sports. A logistic regression was conducted to predict academic timing based on participants’ quartile of birth and sex. The results indicated that males are significantly more likely to be delayed than females, and those student-athletes born in the later months of the year are more frequently delayed compared to their relatively older peers.

ABSTRACTOpportunities for older adults in Western countries, particularly women, to participate in physically demanding, competitive sports have increased since the 1960s. Now, coinciding with the neoliberal shift in social policy, older adults live at a time when physical activity is highly encouraged through ‘healthy or active ageing’ discourses in media, policy policies and the sport/exercise sciences. This study sought to understand how 63 Masters athletes (aged 60 and over) explain their participation in sport and, in particular, the extent to which they use neoliberal language of personal moral responsibility and economic efficiency to explain their own participation and the non-participation of older adults in sport. While degrees of moral talk were evident in the older athlete responses, in almost all cases, non-participation in sport was seen as irrational and in need of explanation. Overall, our findings suggest that older people’s participation in sport has been, or at least is in the process of being, normalized among participants in Masters sport. We discuss how this changing idea about sport and ageing might reshape social policy, as well as social relationships, between older people and the state and between different groups of older people.