Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments

I am deeply appreciative to the authors and their excellent contributions and to Emerald Publishing for adding this first family and sport volume to their comprehensive series, Research in the Sociology of Sport. My particular thanks to Kevin Young for his skillful shepherding of this volume and the invaluable support he provided to me as guest editor. I offer my deepest gratitude to Michael Johnston at William Penn University and Luis F. Nuño at California State University, Los Angeles, for their conscientious peer reviews of the chapters in this volume. Their perceptive comments were instrumental in making this volume an outstanding contribution to sociology. I am truly indebted to Lori Cramer for her supportive insights. I reserve special and heartfelt appreciation to Marie Oliver. My writing projects have greatly benefited from her expert editing talents, inspiration, and hard work for more than two decades. The authors were in complete agreement about Marie's abilities to improve the quality of and to bring out the best in their chapters. She excelled at keeping me on course as we worked together on this volume and made it more accessible to the general reader. Throughout the years, I said to her on more than one occasion that I could not have done it without her.