Examining the Youth Multi-Sport Event Environment: Implications towards athlete development and transitioning

Abstract

Many factors are associated with a person’s attitude formation and intention towards a behavior. In this study, we examined organizational factors that helped form young athletes attitudes regarding their future plans in high performance sport. Through a mixed method survey design, data was collected from 207 young pre-elite athletes who competed during the 2017 Commonwealth Youth Games in Bahamas. Several organizationally controlled aspects of the games environment were found to contribute to young athlete’s satisfaction with the event including their accommodations, available information regarding their sport and finally, the social and cultural activities during games-time. However, satisfaction with the games environment was not predictive of young athletes future intentions to remain in sport. Qualitative thematic coding denoted two key themes related to athlete plans to continue in high performance sport: level of satisfaction and learning. Further, qualitative results revealed five main impediments to continuing in high performance sport specifically, physiological, psychological, performance, environment and life concerns. The paper contributes to our understanding of the controllable and uncontrollable social and environmental factors in a multi-sport international event. Nationally controlled factors that influence young athletes attitude formation, specifically their satisfaction and intentions to remain in sport.