Ted Lasso’s Goldfish Principle

Abstract

This article maps the impacts of the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic on the daily life and wellbeing of university ice hockey athletes in Atlantic Canada. The study branched out from broader research on participants in all university sports in the region that fall under the national governing body, U SPORTS. The regional conference Atlantic University Sport (AUS) houses eleven member institutions, eight of which are varsity ice hockey teams, for total of approximately 300 athletes in both men’s and women’s competition. In the context of a small body of literature on the university athlete experience in Canada and the new challenges that the pandemic posed for modern life, this exploratory study sought to chronicle how the athletes encountered and endured the pandemic, including the cancellation of competition in the Fall of 2020 and beyond. This is a case study using a multidisciplinary lens. It was informed by a sociological account of disruption and relied on a patchwork of literature from education, psychology, sport management, and health studies. Data collection occurred through an online qualitative questionnaire and a content analysis of local mainstream media articles. It was then analyzed partly through a qualitative debrief interview with an athlete from the population. The study results will offer scholars, university sport administrators, and student services professionals an understanding of how university hockey athletes in the region made sense of the long-term uncertainty and frequent changes to their everyday lives, perhaps with a view to improving the quality of support and development programming that institutions offer in the future.