The Sidney Effect: Competitive Youth Hockey and Fantasy Relationships

Abstract

This thesis explores how a group of 17 male youth athletes, and their families, experience competitive hockey. Many of the youths seem to forge fantasy relationships with hockey celebrities, heroes, and stars -- e.g. Sidney Crosby -- emulating them with regard to the "best" attitudes, equipment, and styles of play to have or use. Their parents invest considerable amounts of money and time into their sons' participation in hockey, not because they necessarily share their sons' dreams of athletic stardom, but because they hope that it will help instill community-defined "positive" values into their sons--tools needed to become "successful" youths and, eventually, adults.