English
This is an intelectualoid article. You are warned. If you are looking for my traditional articles about tactics and techniques, wait a few days.
The Dutch Padel Federation published an interesting article this week: The world of sports is changing. To many, it may go unnoticed. To me, it is one of the most interesting I‘ve read in a while. It puts things on the table. It reflects on one of the most important challenges faced nowadays by several sports federations and sports clubs in Holland. Perhaps in the Western world as well.
This is what the Dutch Padel Federation believes in –and that includes me-. The space for traditional models of sports federations seem to be getting smaller, according to the experts. Is there a point or future in trying to build rigid garden fences and holding the keys to every door and window to a club or sports federation?
This idea made me think of sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and his concept of Liquid Modernity. Liquid Modernity emphasizes the fact of change within society; and it argues that change is occurring more and more rapidly in the “modern” world.
Are the challenges faced by the traditional sports federations explained by Liquid Modernity as proposed by Bauman?
The following paragraph is an abstract of Bauman’s work. If you are a sporting intelectualoid nerdish coach, such as me, you will enjoy it. It explains a lot of things.
“…The original cause of the solids melting was not resentment against solidity as such, but dissatisfaction with the degree of solidity of the extant and inherited solids: purely and simply, the bequeathed solids were found not to be solid enough (insufficiently resistant or immunized to change) by the standards of the order-obsessed and compulsively order-building modern powers…. Flexibility has replaced solidity as the ideal condition to be pursued of things and affairs. (kl 97)…”
Perhaps some Dutch sports federations are suffering as a consequence of this. You surely know who. There seems to be no point in resisting change. Time will tell.
What do you think?
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