A survey of sport psychological skills training in South African netball

Abstract

There is a lack of information on sport psychological skills training programmes within South African netball. The purpose of this study was to report on the previous exposure, perceived importance of, and need for sport psychological skills training (SPST) sessions, as expressed by 314 South African provincial netball players (20.30 ± 3.88 years) who participated in the Inter-Provincial Netball tournaments hosted by North-West South Netball during 2004. Additionally, the sport psychological skill (SPS) levels (as measured with the Psychological Skills Inventory (PSI) of Wheaton (1998)) of players from different age groups were compared and reported. Results show that this subject group had limited prior exposure to sport psychologists and SPST. The SPST sessions to which these players had mostly been exposed, include self-confidence, positive self-talk, team cohesion/team spirit, goal-setting and concentration skills. More than two thirds (67.51%) of the total group tested perceived SPST as very important, while almost half (49.68%) of the subjects perceive themselves to be psychologically well prepared for matches. Unfortunately, more than a quarter (26.42%) of the players indicated average, below average or poor psychological preparation for competitions. The results of this study clearly shows that a netball-specific SPST program should be developed by sport psychologists in collaboration with top netball coaches and systematically implemented, especially when looking at the reported skill levels of the subjects in this study. This notion is confirmed by further results, which indicate that 26.75% of the subjects expressed a great need for SPST.