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Positive developmental outcomes for youth are likely to occur when adults intentionally design environments to facilitate that development. However, in sport, studies typically examine only one adult relationship at a time, as opposed to the many that exist. The purpose of this study was to examine high school student-athletes’ perceptions of how a variety of stakeholders in their sport-ecosystem contribute to their life skills development and well-being. Bronfenbrenner’s Bio-Ecological Model and Prilleltensky’s concept of psychopolitical validity served as a guiding framework for interviews conducted with student-athletes (N = 46) in three different states in the United States of America. Themes suggested that the student-athletes’ relationships have a reciprocal interaction with their developmental experiences to create three different forms of development. Student-athletes had basic life skills recognition when learning without meaning was fostered by low-engagement relationships, development through adverse experiences when learning through necessity occurred through challenging relationships, and meaningful development when anchored learning experiences were supported by transformative relationships in their sport world. Lay summary: High school student-athletes were asked about their life skills development and how adults in their sport system influenced or hindered that development. Student-athletes favored highly engaged adults that supported opportunities by anchoring their learning in meaningful experiences. The relationship with the adult and the meaningful experience reciprocally influenced each other. IMPLICATIONS FOR PRACTICECoaches, parents, and athletic directors should aim to provide opportunities for athletes to practice life skills in a meaningful way.Fostering positive relationships with student-athletes and being highly engaged in their development is favored by student-athletes.Transformative relationships and meaningful learning experiences may promote a better sense of community well-being. Coaches, parents, and athletic directors should aim to provide opportunities for athletes to practice life skills in a meaningful way. Fostering positive relationships with student-athletes and being highly engaged in their development is favored by student-athletes. Transformative relationships and meaningful learning experiences may promote a better sense of community well-being.

Student-athletes in the United States encounter a myriad of academic, athletic, and social challenges as they transition into their first year of college sport and life. During this transition, str...

Objectives This study investigated the effects of messaging on physical activity (PA) motivation, and whether the effectiveness of messages aimed to promote either affective benefits, physical health benefits, or a combination of benefits varied based on one’s current PA status. Methods Adult participants (N = 188) completed an online survey assessing demographic information and current stage of change. They then viewed one of four randomly assigned promotional flyers for a campus PA program. The flyers mentioned either the: (a) affective benefits of participation, (b) physical health benefits, (c) a combination of affective and physical health benefits, or (d) a control message. Participants then responded to questions about the flyers, their perceived control for participating, followed by their interest, intention to participate, likelihood of participating, and whether they wanted to sign-up. Results A 2 (activity status) x 2 (affective message) x 2 (physical health message) between-subjects ANOVA found that the effectiveness of the promotional messages on overall cognitive motivation (i.e., a combination of interest, intention, and likelihood of participating) varied based on the respondents’ PA status. Simple effects showed that messages promoting affective benefits led to greater scores for those who are active. A logistic regression showed that PA status, message condition, and their interactions were non-significant predictors of participants’ agreeing to schedule a session in the program. Conclusion Using specific messages to sell PA may help increase motivation. However, the type of message that effectively promotes PA appears to vary depending on the message receiver’s current PA.

Positive youth development is one of the primary goals of high school sport participation, yet the process of how youth transfer life skills from sport to other life domains is in need of greater e...

Confidence is a well-known psychological quality that is relevant for performing at one’s best. Previous literature examined sources from which athletes derive their confidence, what behaviors coaches perceive to be the most effective at building confidence, and the level of congruence between athletes’ and coaches’ perceptions on confidence-building techniques. However, research has rarely asked athletes what they believe are the most important behaviors coaches can do to build confidence in both individuals and teams. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to explore athletes’ perceptions of what coaches can do to build confidence from the perspective of athletes. Collegiate student-athletes (n = 264) completed two open-ended questions regarding specific behaviors that coaches do to build confidence in athletes and teams. A total of 649 interpretable meaning units were analyzed into 13 lower-order themes and 5 higher-order categories. Results revealed that creating a nurturing positive environment, responding to athletes productively, developing effective practices for training, developing interpersonal relationships with athletes, and possessing effective intrapersonal qualities themselves are all behaviors identified as important for building confidence. Many of the behaviors were common to building confidence in both athletes and teams, though there were confidence-building behaviors unique to either group.

The tall poppy syndrome (TPS) is a culturally specific term defined as the “habit of denigrating or ‘cutting down’ those who are successful or who are high achievers”. The purpose of this study was to understand TPS from the perspective of elite New Zealand athletes. Specifically, this study sought to gain elite athletes’ perceptions of whether TPS exists and how it influences New Zealand sporting culture, their personal experiences of being a target of TPS, and how they personally responded to being a target of TPS. Nine current and 11 former New Zealand athletes were interviewed who had competed at Olympic, Commonwealth, or World Championship events. Athletes suggested that TPS was infused throughout society and influenced how the public celebrated winners and viewed success. Athletes believed they had been targets of TPS and viewed it both a positive and negative influence on athlete development. TPS-related criticisms were seen as providing motivation for hard work by some athletes, while others ident...

Objectives Researchers have advocated for coaches to intentionally teach life skills to their athletes given the accrued developmental benefits. The purpose of this research was to develop and offer initial evidence of validity and reliability for a measure assessing the extent to which coaches are intentional in their approaches to teaching life skills through sport. Design Using two independent samples (n = 623; n = 817), three studies were conducted to develop and initially validate the Coaching Life Skills in Sport Questionnaire (CLSS-Q). Method In study one, the scale development and content validity processes of the initial measure were conducted. In study two, the factorial validity of the CLSS-Q was tested through exploratory structural equation modeling and confirmatory factor analyses. Moreover, scale invariance, discriminant and convergent validity, and construct reliability were assessed. In study three, concurrent validity was assessed with the combined sample (N = 1440) using two theoretically linked constructs. Results The results of the three studies provide initial evidence for the validity and reliability of the 5-factor 36-item CLSS-Q. Conclusions The CLSS-Q represents a useful scale for researchers interested in examining levels of intentionality in coaches' teaching of life skills through sport. As scale development is an ongoing process, further research is needed to continue to accumulate evidence for the validity and reliability of the CLSS-Q.

There is general agreement that for collegiate student-athletes to thrive in academics and athletics these individuals must develop and maintain quality commitments to both school and sport throughout college. Yet, limited research has investigated student-athletes’ concurrent negotiation of their discrete commitments to school and sport, and its consequences for these individuals' academic, athletic, and general lives. The purpose of the present study was threefold: (a) identify distinct profiles representing collegiate students-athletes’ dual commitment to school and sport, (b) detect whether these dual commitment profiles demonstrated compatibility versus conflict, and (c) examine the relationships between dual commitment profiles and student-athletes’ academic, athletic, and general life outcomes. A sample of 248 NCAA Division I student-athletes (Mage = 19.87 years, SD = 1.33 years) completed measures of commitment, engagement, and burnout in school and sport, as well as global psychological well-being indices (i.e., life satisfaction and subjective vitality). Using latent profile analyses, results supported a four-profile solution comprising dual commitment profiles with unique configurations of enthusiastic (EC) and constrained (CC) commitment to school and sport: Weak CC-Dominant: School/Strong EC-Dominant: Sport (n = 43), Weak CC-Dominant: School/Strong CC-Dominant: Sport (n = 71), Moderate Commitment: School & Sport (n = 91), and Strong EC-Dominant: School & Sport (n = 43). Dual commitment profiles characterized by enthusiastic-dominant commitment patterns were associated with higher levels of school/sport engagement and global psychological well-being, as well as lower levels of school/sport burnout. Overall, our findings established that collegiate student-athletes are tied to school and sport for various reasons and speak to a potential need for enhanced support networks and services catered to student-athletes’ academic role in the United States.

For athletes, life skills transfer represents the vital ongoing process in their personal development whereby they internalize the skills they have learned in sport and apply them to multiple life ...

For a sport skill to be considered a life skill, it must be successfully transferred and applied beyond sport. Life skills transfer is an essential process, but it has yet to be fully delineated within the sport psychology literature. The purpose of the current paper is to present a definition and model of life skills transfer and outline future research needs. A critical review of the literature within sport psychology and other learning-based disciplines is offered to assess our current understanding of learning transfer. A definition and model of transfer are then presented, focusing on the athlete learner’s experience of life skills transfer. Within the model, we first examine how athletes bring personal assets and autobiographical experiences to sport. Second, we explore how sport is a learning environment with distinctive demands, programme designs, and coach characteristics and strategies. Third, we explain how transfer contexts provide environmental conditions, which, depending on how they...

There is a paucity of sport parenting research that specifically examines the role parents play in the introductory stages of the youth sport experience, despite the fact that this is when youth involvement is at its highest. To fill this void in the literature, this study examined expert coaches’ v

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to gain student-athlete perceptions of: (1) the definition of leadership for high school student-athletes; (2) the process of leadership development in high school sport; and (3) the factors that have helped or hindered leadership transfer between high school sport and other life domains.\ud \ud Design: This study was grounded in an interpretivist ontological perspective and used focus group interviews to gather insights of student-athletes’ leadership experiences.\ud \ud Method: Purposeful sampling identified 33 high-school student-athlete leaders who were members of student advisory councils for high school state athletic associations in the United States. The 15 females and 18 males participated in focus-group interviews. Reflexive thematic analysis of the interview data was then conducted.\ud \ud Results: Results revealed that student-athlete leadership was viewed as a skill-set and a mindset, driven by individual agency. As an on-going developmental process, student-athletes gained awareness of leadership skills, increased self-expectations and self-confidence in their use and application of leadership skills, and developed a transformational leadership mindset, as they encountered and engaged with critical learning opportunities in high school sport and gained support from coaches and peers. Leadership application outside of sport was a multidimensional psychological process, including both conscious and implicit elements, and facilitated or constrained by environmental opportunities and social influences.\ud \ud Conclusions: High school sport offers a unique context where self-agentic youth leadership development in sport and life can occur through experiential learning opportunities. To this point, future research directions and recommendations for practitioners will be provided.

The purpose of this article is to describe the phenomenon of choking in sport, and suggest a process approach to managing competitive pressure and choking (based on the sport, cognitive, and clinical psychology literature). Specific suggestions are provided for athletes to use before, during, and after competition. Athletes are encouraged to accept and acknowledge pressure and the feelings associated with choking, as opposed to attempting to avoid or get rid of these feelings. The strategy for athletes to use during competition is to ACT on it, or to follow the steps of Accept, Center, and Trust.

This study used a grounded theory methodology to understand if and how psychological development in youth athletes was facilitated by an ‘intensive’ summer wrestling camp experience. The theoretical sampling approach involved 10 athlete participants of the camp, nine parents of athletes, the director of the camp, and four camp staff members, who took part in a series of interviews before, during, and after the camp. Two researchers were also embedded in the camp and attended all sessions, took detailed notes, collected camp materials, and conducted observations. Following a grounded theory analysis approach, a model is presented that outlines how youth participants’ developed psychological qualities from the coach created hallenges and adversity that were systematically designed to facilitate sport performance enhancement and life skills. Variations emerged in psychological antecedents and characteristics, how the challenging wrestling camp environment was interpreted and experienced, and how learning was transferred to sport and life domains outside of the wrestling camp. This study provided insight into a unique youth sport context that was able to simultaneously develop psychological qualities to be used as sport performance enhancement and life skills.

The purpose of this article was to provide a substantive-methodological synergy of potential importance to future research in sport and exercise psychology. The substantive focus was to improve the measurement of coaching efficacy by developing a revised version of the coaching efficacy scale (CES) for head coaches (N = 557) of youth sport teams (CES II-YST). The methodological focus was exploratory structural equation modeling (ESEM), a methodology that integrates the advantages of exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) within the general structural equation model (SEM). The synergy was a demonstration of how ESEM (as compared with CFA) may be used, guided by content knowledge, to develop (or confirm) a measurement model for the CES II-YST. A single-group ESEM provided evidence for close model-data fit, while a single-group CFA fit significantly worse than the single-group ESEM and provided evidence for only approximate model-data fit. A multiple-group ESEM provided evidence for partial factorial invariance by coach’s gender.

The Mentor Leader outlines a leadership philosophy, which Tony Dungy credits for his many individual and team successes. Authored by the successful NFL coach Dungy, and colleague Nathan Whitaker, t...

10-Minute Toughness: The Mental-Training Program for Winning Before the Game Begins provides a simple and effective mental-training program designed by a highly experienced mental coach. Jason Selk...