According to some leaders, it seems that it is getting more and more difficult to convince young people to commit as volunteers in sports clubs. How can this feeling of crisis be explained? The team from CERLIS at Paris-Descartes University have noticed the historical decline of a certain type of “militant” voluntary commitment in favour of a type of involvement in which the proportion of social and personal motivations has changed. It may be that today’s young voluntary athletes are reinventing tomorrow’s forms of associations in the same way that the first Parisian lycee students founded the first athletic clubs at the end of the 19th century.