Higher Goals

The most extensive treatment to date of women's experiences in team sports, Higher Goals provides an ethnographic account of the "Blades", a Canadian team that plays at the highest levels of women's hockey. With a vivid depiction of life on the Blades, the book follows the team over two seasons, tracing their journey to a national championship. Key issues in the sociology of sport and gender studies are explored, including the construction of community among women athletes; the "feminine apologetic" and pressures on athletes to conform to feminine ideals; homophobia and the experiences of lesbian athletes; physicality and women's experience in contact sports; the contribution of sport to ideologies of gender; the impact of commercialization on women's sport; and the changing relationship between women's and men's sports.