Sports day in Canada: A national celebration of sport

Abstract

Introduction: Participation in organised sports (OS) has been ecommended as an opportunity to increase young peoples’ hysical activity (PA) levels. Girls, however, spend a substantial roportion of time during OS training and games inactive. Thereore the purpose of this study was to document lesson context and oach behavior during OS practices and games, whichmay assist in dentifying opportunities to increase PA in OS. Methods: A cross-sectional design was used. Participants were 4 girls, mean (±SD) age 13.4±2.2 yr, recruited from 10 teams in hreeOS (netball, basketball, soccer) in theWestern Suburbs of Sydey, Australia. One training session and one game were observed or each team using the SOFIT direct observation system to docment lesson context and coach behavior. Coach behaviour was oded using a hierarchical format to record PA promotion, discourgement, and demonstration. Lesson context was coded into one f six categories: management, knowledge delivery, fitness, skill ractice, game play, and free play. Results:An average of 13.0±11.5 and 15.8±9.6 occurrences/hr ere observed during training and games where coaches prooted PA. Few occurrences/hr were observed during training nd games where coaches discouraged PA (1.9±2.9 vs 1.2±1.5). crossOS, therewere considerablymore occurrences/hr of coaches emonstrating PA during training than during games (7.6±6.1 vs .7±4.4). AcrossOS, a significantly highermeanpercentage of time uring games were spent in game play compared to training sesions (69.4±9.0% vs 22.6±24.9%), whereas a significantly higher ean percentage of time during training sessions were spent in kill practice (34.9±18.2% vs 6.9±4.6%) and fitness (8.5±5.8% s 2.3±2.4%) compared to games. Across OS games and trainng, a considerable percentage of time was spent in management 11.1±3.9% vs 15.0±4.7%) and knowledge delivery (8.8±4.4% vs 8.5±13.7%). Low percentages of time were observed for free play cross OS, for both games and training (1.6±4.6% vs 0.5±0.6%). Discussion: Observations suggest that across OS, coaches prooted PA more than they discouraged PA which may influence irls’ PA levels. Considerable percentages of time, however, were pent in management and knowledge delivery, where it is likely hat girls would be relatively inactive. There may be potential for mprovementwithinOS to optimise girls’ PA levels of by continuing o promote PA and reducing management and knowledge delivery ontent without interfering with fundamental learning opportuniies and skill development that occur in OS. This information on OS anbeused to develop strategies to increase girls’ PA levels through port.