True-Sport-Report

I. Introduction
People have been playing sporting games in one form or another since
antiquity. Sporting events appear in earliest mythology, and athletes
were major celebrities in Ancient Greece. Over the centuries, crowds have
gathered to watch sporting competitions, with sometimes violent, nationalistic
outcomes. More recent times have witnessed the growth of formal,
more organized sport, governed by sets of rules and expectations for fair
play. Athletes might be highly paid professionals, Olympians, college or
high school players, children in community leagues, or adults engaging
in weekend or evening pickup leagues. Sport is played in the backyard, the
city street, the stadium, the arena, the natatorium, or anywhere space can
be found that can accommodate enough players to constitute a match.
Sport plays a major role in American life. More than three-fifths of U.S.
adults—approximately 162 million people—claim some relationship to
sport-related activities, including 25 percent who are actively engaged in
sport as participants, parents of children in sport, coaches, or volunteers. 1
Slightly more than 1 in 3 American adults describe themselves as sport
spectators, and of these, nearly 4 in 10 describe themselves as sport fanatics.
Participation in highly organized youth sport has become all-encompassing
in the United States and is regarded by many as a significant cultural
event of modern times, even as a rite of childhood—and parenthood.
Data from the 2000 U.S. Census show that the number of youth involved
in organized sport in the United States was estimated to be more than
50 million. 2 A 2003 survey by Grunbaum 3 found that 57 percent of high
school students reported playing one or more sports at some time in their
school or community. The National Federation of State High School
Associations 4 gathers data annually on the number of student athletes
nationally and found that the level has increased every year over the past 20
years. Survey data from the Sporting Goods Manufacturing Association 5
show that the number of high school boys’ and girls’ teams increased
19