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Athletes frequently describe the junior-to-senior transition (JST) as the most difficult within-career transition, and many athletes have acknowledged that they failed to cope well with it. Athletes' development in the JST is influenced by narratives existing within relevant contexts and settings. This study served as a follow-up to the quantitative longitudinal study to gain a deeper understanding of individual JST paths through a qualitative narrative approach. The aim was to explore 2 team sport athletes' (John, the football player, and Anna, the basketball player) JST pathways, emphasizing psychosocial factors that were perceived as facilitating and debilitating the process. Narrative type interviews were conducted, and the holistic-form structural analysis was used. Through their narratives, John and Anna reconstructed their JST paths, attaching meanings to certain events, recounting the people involved, and making personal reflections. John had a performance and family narrative and Anna had an enjoyment and relationship narrative. They perceived their key facilitating persons to be their family members and teammates. The debilitating factors were some coaches' behaviors. At the time of this study, John and Anna had already terminated their athletic careers and had refocused on getting an education. Although they did not reach elite senior levels in their sports, they found their athletic careers to be meaningful life experiences. Lay Summary: The aim was to explore two team sport athletes' junior-to-senior transition (JST) pathways, emphasizing psychosocial factors involved in the transition process. The findings revealed two narratives. John (football player) storied his JST as a performance and family narrative and Anna (basketball player) as an enjoyment and relationship narrative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The specific objectives of this study were: (a) to identify adjustment patterns in the junior-to-senior transition (JST) based on athletes’ dynamics of adjustment during a two-and-a-half-year period, and (b) to describe the athletes’ demographic, personal and transitional characteristics at the beginning of the JST that were related to the different adjustment patterns. This quantitative longitudinal study consisted of five measurements conducted approximately every six months over a two-and-a-half-year period. One instrument was used to measure the transition variables and three instruments to measure personal characteristics. In the first measurement, 101 club-based Swedish athletes with the mean age of 16.51 (SD = 1.32) took part. The latent profile analysis on athletes’ perceived degree of adjustment provided three profiles with different patterns in the JST. Profile 1 had a progressive adjustment pattern, whereas the second profile had a regressive adjustment pattern, and the third profile had a sustainable adjustment pattern. The descriptive statistics and Cohen’s d indicated that there were differences (with variation in magnitude) between the three profiles at the first measurement in terms of how athletes perceived different transitional characteristics. Keeping a primary focus on sport (but also having attention to other spheres of life), high athletic identity and motivation to reach senior level were characteristics relevant for both progressive and sustainable adjustment patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives In adolescence, personally meaningful autobiographical memories begin to integrate into cultural narrative structures to form a life story. We examined how and to what extent adolescent Finnish athletes narrate and integrate significant life events in sport and education into their identities and future narratives in order to delineate the different styles of athletes’ career construction. Design Longitudinal qualitative study. Method Ten female and eight male, elite junior athletes, aged 15–16 at baseline, participated in individual conversational interviews. The resulting interview data were analyzed using narrative analysis. Results Thirteen of 18 adolescent athletes drew primarily on the performance narrative plot to construct their life story and five of 18 athletes could not project into the future beyond their athletic selves. We identified three styles of athletes’ career construction. Employing musical terminology as a metaphor, the contrapuntal style entwines sport and education as harmonically related life-themes; monophonic style draws on a prominent athletic life-theme; and dissonant style is underpinned by discord of sport and education. We did not detect direct associations between narrative types (performance, discovery and relational) and career construction styles. We show the dominant style development within an exemplary story. Conclusion Exploration of the future and possible selves are critical for developing meaningful (dis)continuity of a dual career pathway from adolescence to adulthood. We conclude that dual career discourse is gaining traction in directing young athletes’ future thinking; however, a broader repertoire of exemplary success stories which allow athletes to imagine achieving excellence in diverse ways would enable them to channel action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives The paper presents a national level Swedish project aimed at examining adolescent student-athletes' dual career experiences (including sport, studies, and private life) during their first year at national elite sport schools (Swedish abbreviation RIGs will be used) with a particular focus on development of their athletic and student identities. The developmental model of transitions faced by athletes (Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004) and the athletic career transition model (Stambulova, 2003) served as underlying frameworks. Design A longitudinal mixed-method research design was used with autumn-to-spring quantitative and qualitative parts. Method Sixteen year old student-athletes, representing 27 sports and 33 RIGs ( n = 261 in the first and n = 250 in the second measurement), completed three quantitative instruments. Additionally, in-depth interviews were conducted with 10 participants. Results Results revealed (a) significant changes in the participants' transition/adaptation variables from the first to the second measurement accompanied by rather high perceived quality of adjustment at RIG both at the beginning and at the end of the educational year; (b) significant contributions of the transition variables to the perceived quality of adjustment with personal resources as a key predictor; (c) significantly higher athletic than student identity in both quantitative measurements, but with inter- and intra-individual differences with regard to balancing the two shown by the qualitative data. Conclusions The study contributes to deeper understanding of dual career experiences of Swedish adolescent athletes; the authors provide recommendations for psychological dual career support services at RIGs and outline future research in the Swedish dual career model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]