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Since basketball tends to be publicly perceived as a male sport in South Korea, the recent decade’s rapid increase in basketball participants among female college students has drawn academic attention. The typical format of club league participation can be characterized as their voluntary engagement in organized amateur competitive sport. As an initial scholarly work, this paper aims to explore the experiences and meanings of college female basketball club league participants. The notion of “serious participation”, identified from the early survey stage of the research interest, has been used as a guiding analytic concept. Data collection and analysis have been conducted through an ethnographic field work including participant observations and in-depth interviews. The results firstly analyze ways in which the basketball club leagues for college female students have been formed and developed during the recent decade. Secondly, aspects of serious basketball participation are detailed to understand their devotion and commitment to basketball. Various participation activities, active acquisition of basketball knowledge and information, ongoing communication through social networks, multiple roles and statuses in clubs and leagues are prioritized as crucial aspects of serious participation. Thirdly, the authentic experience of being a basketball athlete is conceived as equivalent to disregarding gendered stereotypes about women’s sport participation.
