‘We weren’t allowed to just exist together’: Emotional labour and encounters with pandemic controlwork in physical recreation spaces

Abstract Based on interviews with recreational athletes and community sport organizers, we document how volunteers, coaches, administrators and office staff became temporary pandemic control workers tasked with interpreting and implementing public health guidelines and restricting access to physical recreation under the pretext of ensuring a safe return to play. These recreation spaces ceased to be primarily sites of leisure and instead also became sites of social control and regulation. In this article, we are attuned to the emotional, affective and sensory experiences that characterize these pandemic encounters. Specifically, we detail how these control workers were often required to substitute affective force in the form of emotional labour to achieve compliance as well as how their directives changed the recreation atmosphere for some athletes and fitness enthusiasts—practice, play and off-field/court interactions routinely felt different.