Sports and Aging

Gerald R. Gems is a professor emeritus of kinesiology at North Central College. He is the author and editor of several books, including Before Jackie Robinson: The Transcendent Role of Black Sporting Pioneers (Nebraska, 2017) and The Athletic Crusade: Sport and American Cultural Imperialism (Nebraska, 2012).

“Sports and Aging includes inspiring narratives from a wide variety of individuals and a vast array of cultures and different ages to explore the way people who exercise regularly have embraced a healthy lifestyle and found meaning through exercise and in their communities. These essays are thoughtful and reflective accounts of the lived experience of aging practitioners of sport and physical activity. . . . [This book] will inspire others to join communities of movement, exercise, and fitness in a time when health and the communal are becoming increasingly important.”-Susan J. Bandy, professor in the Sport and Humanities Program at Ohio State University “Focusing on the lives of people from different ethnic groups, cultures, religions, and ages, this book is an important contribution to aging studies, which often lack such an intercultural and intersectional approach. . . . The fourteen stories of individuals show that there is neither one way of aging nor one way how one should age, and that the importance of physical activity and sport is different for each person throughout their life.”-Annette R. Hofmann, professor at the Ludwigsburg University of Education and president of the International Society for the History of Physical Education and Sport

• AcknowledgmentsIntroductionGerald R. Gems1. A History of AgingGerald R. Gems2. Life with a PurposeFrances Gems3. Looking BackTony Kaleth4. It Was Not Easy!Maha Ebeid5. My Life of Physical Activity and FitnessJames R. Coates Jr.6. Aging, Antiaging, and Infinite Youth in TaiwanChia-Ju Yen7. A Matter of PerspectiveSamuel O. Regalado8. Dance until the Music StopsTansin Benn9. Carpe DiemLuciane Lauffer10. Aging as an AdventureM. Ann Hall11. An Antiaging Sporting Life in an Aging SocietyKohei Kawashima12. Going StrongGary Osmond13. On a Meaningful Life with Sport as a Permanent CompanionElse TrangbÆk14. Making a DifferenceJanice J. Crosswhite15. Fit, Fun, Forever YoungGertrud PfisterConclusionGerald R. GemsAppendix: Aging Project SurveyContributorsIndex