Research on youth sport within the sport coaching and physical education literature has tended to overlook the nature of experience and the meanings that sport holds in the lives of children and young people. This paper makes a contribution toward redressing this imbalance by reporting on a close-focus case study on children's reasons for joining a Sydney soccer club and their reasons for staying in it. Employing an interpretive research approach the study inquired into the factors shaping the decisions by children aged 9-12 years to join the club and the aspects of their experiences of being in it that keep them in it from a socio-cultural perspective. (Contains 1 table.)