Recollect, Reconnect, Reunite: The Story of a Hungarian Junior Basketball Team (Accepted)

Type of Abstract (select):

Abstract (max. 250 words):
Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic in Hungary, members of a female basketball team from the 1970s had a virtual meeting in April 2020 lieu of their quarterly in-person reunions. The former teammates shared what they were doing during quarantine, lamented over postponed weddings, and announced the birth of their grandchildren. What political and cultural conditions sparked the creation of the community, and what are the experiences that bonded them together in this way? In the first of its kind within the Eastern Bloc context, Emese Ivan and Johanna Mellis are conducting oral histories with Hungarian female athletes who belonged to a single basketball team during their teen years under socialism. Beginning in childhood, the athletes developed a lifelong bond and received plentiful sporting opportunities while playing for a highly successful female coach at the Központi Sportiskola, the Central Sports School in Budapest. As the authors argue, however, female athletes still faced considerable gender discrimination due to the patriarchal character of the Hungarian sport leadership and the connections-based nature of the socialist state more generally. The presentation will also reflect on how the women’s memories and experiences of their time full of dynamic opportunities and a rich community contrast with an outsider’s perspective of a doping-obsessed regional sport system under a broader harsh, unjust socialist Bloc.




Brief Professional Bio (max. 100 words):
Emese Ivan PhD (Kinesiology); MBA
Associate Professor of Health and Human Services
Senior Associate Dean
Collins College of Professional Studies
St. John’s University
ivane@stjohns.edu

Her research interest is in the areas of creativity and innovation in the sport-health-media complex and the international and comparative analysis of women sports in the late 20th century.

Johanna Mellis PhD (History)
Assistant Professor of World History
Ursinus College
jmellis@ursinus.edu

Her research interest is in the areas of world/global history, Central European history, oral history, the history of sport and memory studies