Legacy of a Female Junior Basketball Team

Type of Abstract (select): Paper presentation

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 is conducting oral histories – following the work of Graham Smith (2007), Carly Adams (2014), Johanna Mellis (2020) - 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. Their sporting opportunities in the 1970s stood in stark contrast to the limitations that female athletes faced elsewhere, perhaps most famously in the US where it took federal legislation to force public education institutions to fund both genders equally in sport. The presentation will 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 is an Associate Professor, Health and Human Services at Sy John's University. She has served as Senior Associate Dean in the College of Professional Studies between 2020 and 2023.Her research interest includes studying the intersection of sport and physical activity and health. She is also publishing actively in the field of sociology of sport. She received her PhD in Kinesiology from the University of Western Ontario in Canada, MBA from Purdue University and her BA at the University of Economics in Hungary.