An investigation of professional sport coach’s educational agony and reward: From professional baseball coaches

Abstract

Purpose The present study explores educational values of professional coaches from perspectives as educators while they are giving the players sports coaching. Since free agent system was introduced in 1999 at Korean Baseball Organization(KBO) league, the socio-economical differences between players and coaches are getting bigger and bigger. In this situation, professional coaches tend to have more difficulties in interacting with the players. The study focuses on looking into professional coaches' educational agony and reward. Also, it highlights their educational values as educators rather than coaches. Methods Two professional baseball coaches and a TV commentator participated in the study: all past professional players, and professional coaches for more than 10 years. The researchers collected data through semi-structured in-depth interviews; each participant was interviewed three times. The researchers recorded and transcribed all of the interviews; then, the researchers reread the interview transcripts and inductively produced codes for themes whenever emergent codes appeared. Verbatim quotations from the interviews are excerpted in the present research report. Results The findings indicate that, first, the participants are all highly motivated in giving lessons to the players. They all helped the players overcome the difficulties and be good players. They emphasized the importances of endeavors and attitudes during their lessons to be well-received by the players. Second, the participants agreed that good coaches should have the ability to find the potentials of the players and have personality to gain the players' trust. They always have to work and study hard to keep expertises. Conclusions This study argues that the participants are playing their roles in a sport coaching area not only as coaches, but also as educators.