Assessing coordination abilities in Romanian water polo players aged 10-12 using the Bruininks-Oseretsky test battery

Abstract

The main purpose of the study is to assess the development level of coordination abilities in 61 water polo players aged 10-12 years using the Bruininks-Oseretsky Test of Motor Proficiency, Second Edition (BOT-2). This test battery was designed for specialists, providing them with an effective and reliable tool to measure fine and gross motor skills. After analysing the test battery, we applied only five out of the eight subtests (the other three were considered irrelevant for the game of water polo). The tests used in our study aimed at measuring: fine motor precision (FMP), fine motor integration (FMI), bilateral coordination (BC), balance (BAL), upper limb coordination (ULC). The results were statistically interpreted using IBM SPSS v. 12, SmartPLS and Microsoft Excel. We chose these programs for their accurate calculation of mean differences between the obtained scores but also for their interpretations of the t-Test at the significance thresholds required for each subtest. Most of the selected athletes achieved below-average scores for: FMI (score = 2.54), BC (score = 2.85), BAL (score = 2.84), FMP (score = 3.07), ULC (score = 3.23). In order to achieve superior performance, athletes whose scale score is 20-24 and ideally over 25 should be selected. In conclusion, the testing provided essential and relevant information on the level of manifestation of coordination abilities in athletes, allowing specialists to implement specific exercises for the development of coordination abilities in the training process.