Abstract

Sports participation is considered beneficial for the development of socially vulnerable youth, not only in terms of physical health but also in terms of cognitive, social and emotional health. Despite the strong belief that sports clubs offer a setting for positive youth development, there is limited knowledge about how socially vulnerable youths experience their participation in these clubs. Interviews were conducted with 22 socially vulnerable youths that play a sport at a local sports club. An inductive content analysis was conducted and three themes were discovered that are included in the positive and negative sports experiences: the extent to which the youths experienced visibility of their skills, the extent to which the youths felt confident while playing their sport, and the extent to which the youths felt that sport was a challenge they liked to take on. More importantly, there was a fragile balance within each of the themes and the sports coaches played an important role in installing and maintaining a supportive environment in which the youths could have meaningful, consistent and balanced sports experiences. It is not self-evident that for socially vulnerable youth sports experiences are positive and supporting.

Highlights

  • The attention that policymakers give to sport as a tool for the personal development of socially vulnerable youth is growing, as researchers argue that the sports setting holds potential for enhancing physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development (Fraser-Thomas, Côté, & Deakin, 2005)

  • Sports participation is seen as a tool that can alleviate some of the distorted relationships, when they have positive and supporting experiences within the sports domain, in contrast to the negative experiences they have in other societal domains (Haudenhuyse et al, 2014)

  • The negative experiences of socially vulnerable youth with the societal institutions in their life may translate to the sports setting and may influence how they experience their participation in sport

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Summary

Introduction

The attention that policymakers give to sport as a tool for the personal development of socially vulnerable youth is growing, as researchers argue that the sports setting holds potential for enhancing physical, emotional, social, and cognitive development (Fraser-Thomas, Côté, & Deakin, 2005). Research has suggested that young people can develop coping abilities through their participation in sport (Tamminen & Holt, 2012), which they can use in dealing with everyday life challenges With these ideas in mind, increasing the sports participation of socially vulnerable youth may be a promising way to strengthen their personal development, because the sports participation rates of socially vulnerable youth are lower than for their average peers (Vandermeerschen, Vos, & Scheerder, 2015). Research into sports experiences has often been conducted in athlete samples (Bruner, Hall, & Côté, 2011; Fraser-Thomas & Côté, 2009; Kendellen & Camiré, 2015a) These studies demonstrate that young athletes experience a diversity of developmental experiences as well as negative experiences related to various stressors in the sports setting. Given the vulnerable nature of socially vulnerable youth going to local sport clubs, there is reason to believe that these youths’ sports experiences may not always be positive

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