Contact Zone Research Paper

Contact Zones Within Collegiate Sports
The definition of sports is physical activity that is governed by a set of rules or customs and often engaged in competitively. However to fully understand sports, especially collegiate sports, you must acknowledge the existence of contact zones. Contact zone is a term used to "refer to social spaces (teams) where cultures (players and coaches) meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in the contexts of highly asymmetrical relations of power (coaches overpower the players)…" In watching higher level sports you often times see players and coaches, mainly the coaches though, yelling at the other. You will see the coaches take the player off to the side of the field to talk. This talk is not a chat between the two, it is primarily the coach telling the player they are doing something wrong, what they are doing wrong, and how to fix what they are doing wrong. Little player input is ever initialized.
Players who do not accept what coaches say are incapable of meshing well with a team. Collegiate athletes all come from different teams with different styles of play and when they get to the college team the way they are use to playing may or may not be the way the coach wants to play. However, players know what coach says goes due to them being the inferior party. This is exactly what the contact zone entail, players and coaches with different opinions, yet the coach makes the final decision. The coach's job is to bring all the different styles of play together where everyone plays with a common style of play. Some teams have really good individual players however they