Going South: Canadians' Engagement with American Athletic Scholarships

Abstract

This article examines the dynamics and implications of Canadians’ pursuit of and ambiguous engagement with athletic scholarships off ered to elite athletes by American colleges and universities. A? er sketching in the broader social and cul- tural context within which the movement of Canadian athletes to the U.S. occurs, it considers ways in which reckonings of high achievement in sport and other fi elds of performance tend to be constructed in Canada in terms of transnational and global comparisons. By examining how and why innumerable Canadian children and youths, with the assistance of parents and other adults, come to focus upon the pur- suit of American athletic scholarships, this article seeks to penetrate an ambivalent form of competition that rewards its winners by taking them away from their families and country for a period of years just as they enter adulthood.