History and development of the Asian-South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology from 1988 to 2020

History and development of the Asian-South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology from 1988 to 2020

In the late 1980s, the Managing Council of the International Society of Sport Psychology (ISSP) charged senior member, Atsushi Fujita from Japan, with the task of forming an organisation to promote sport psychology in the Asian region. Fujita called a meeting during the 1988 Seoul Olympic Scientific Congress, at which he gained support for the creation of such an organisation. Fujita recruited a small group of Asian and South Pacific colleagues to work toward this goal, appreciating that countries in Oceania and the southern Pacific would, otherwise, have no regional affiliation. During the 1989 ISSP World Congress in Singapore, Fujita presented the statutes of the Asian-South Pacific Association of Sport Psychology (ASPASP) to an open meeting. The statutes were supported, the regional body was established, and Fujita was elected in-augural President. Other notables involved from the very genesis of the organisation included Michael Bar-Eli (Israel), M. L. Kamlesh (India), Qi Wei Ma (China), and Colin Davey (Australia). An organisation emerged, uncertain at first, that has steadily grown in stature, representing the world’s most populous and diverse region. In this paper, we chronicle the development of ASPASP. We discuss the shaping and reshaping of its formal organisation, including the statutes and management. We consider the mission of ASPASP to develop sport psychology 1 in the Asian-South Pacific region. We reflect on the challenges of expanding membership to represent the broadest base across the region. We describe ASPASP international congresses, national and regional conferences, and links with world and regional organisations in sport psychology. We review ASPASP publications from nascent newsletters to major congress proceedings, the Secrets of Asian Sport Psychology edited e-textbook ( Terry, Zhang, Kim, Morris, & Hanrahan, 2014 ), the ASPASP website, and now the launch of the exciting periodical, the Asian Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology (AJSEP).