Elite Youth Sport Research Articles

Talent Identification in Elite Youth Sports

Several talent selection programs in elite sport schools are based on motor diagnostics for the purpose of recommending or transferring promising talents to general groups of sports; game sports, combat sports or endurance sports, and to more concrete sports such as gymnastics, skiing, or tennis. However, in most sports, the predictive value of such testing is unclear. PURPOSE: The aim of the talent prediction was to assign each individual of the Under-15 athletes to his own sport. METHODS: The sample consisted of N = 97 youth athletes from Shanghai Elite Sport school belonging to six different sports including basketball (n = 7), fencing (n = 23), judo (n = 20), swimming (n = 10), table tennis (n = 15), and volleyball (n = 22). The performance diagnosis took place between September 2016 and March 2017, and comprised eighteen anthropometric parameters, two motor tests on back strength and complex reaction speed, five physiological measurements of the heart rate at rest, vital capacity, systolic and diastolic blood pressure, and hemoglobin concentration in the blood. The prognostic validity of the morphological, motor, and physiological tests was determined using linear discriminant analysis and nonlinear neural networks (multilayer perceptron). RESULTS: The between-sports differences in a battery of generic anthropometric, motor, and physiological tests allow one to distinguish the young athletes’ talents according to their individual sport provenience. The linear and nonlinear statistical methods that were used in parallel to identify the most relevant talent characteristics of each of the six sports by means of the leave-one-out procedure reversely confirmed the quality of the results. CONCLUSION: All diagnostic methods exhibited medium to high validity to discriminate between the six different sports. The relevance of the eighteen body dimensions, five physiological measures, and two motor tests for talent identification was confirmed.

A Season-Long Goal-Setting Intervention for Elite Youth Basketball Teams

The current study involved a season-long team goal-setting intervention within an elite youth sport population. Participants were 75 male basketball players (Mage = 16.23 years, SD = 1.40) from 6 teams that were randomly assigned to team goal-setting (n = 3) or no-treatment control (n = 3) conditions. The intervention condition received a 3-stage team goal-setting program throughout the season, whereas no systematic program was delivered to the control teams. All participants completed questionnaires assessing perceptions of team cohesion and motivational climate at 3 time-points throughout the season (beginning, midseason, end-season). Data were first analyzed using a multivariate analysis of covariance to determine differences in cohesion and motivational climate throughout the season, with pretest scores and age included as covariates. In addition, a series of multiple mediation analyses were conducted to determine whether motivational climate mediated the relationship between preseason and postseason cohesion perceptions. Findings suggest that although perceptions of cohesion remained constant for the control condition teams, those in the intervention condition experienced a decrease throughout the season. In addition, increase in ego-involving climate within the intervention group negatively affected the cohesion perceptions throughout the season; however, task-involving motivational climate decreased for teams in the intervention condition. These results highlight the importance of accounting for additional variables when conducting team-building interventions, and findings are discussed in relation to their implications for the literature, in concert with practical implications and future directions.Lay Summary: This study extends the team-building literature by conducting a season-long goal-setting intervention in elite youth sport. In recognizing previously identified limitations within the field, the intervention involved both direct and indirect delivery methods, was conducted across the entire season, and included additional constructs beyond cohesion and a control condition.

The boy behind the bravado: Player advanced safety and support in a professional football academy setting

In elite youth sport, the demands of high sporting performance, and the unpredictable and multifaceted changes during adolescence can significantly impact young athletes’ wellbeing. The City Player Advanced Safety and Support (City PASS) framework incorporates team psychological formulation to identify concerns about players (wellbeing, behavioural and performance) and share key information to develop a collective understanding of these concerns. This new knowledge is then used to develop action plans to manage these concerns. A common thread that emerged from City PASS panel reviews during the first six months concerned adolescent players displaying challenging behaviours. These challenging player behaviours were often considered to be fronts of ‘bravado’ that obscured the true underlying issues faced by the young person. Consequently, an intervention around equipping staff to recognise and manage the ‘Boy behind the bravado’, or the boy before the elite performer, through improved perspective-taking, was introduced to illustrate how insights gained from City PASS can be used to enhance player safety and support within a professional football academy setting.

The SMS, Phone, and medical Examination sports injury surveillance system is a feasible and valid approach to measuring handball exposure, injury occurrence, and consequences in elite youth sport.

Current methods of sports injury surveillance are limited by lack of medical validation of self-reported injuries and/or incomplete information about injury consequences beyond time loss from sport. The aims of this study were to (a) evaluate the feasibility of the SMS, Phone, and medical Examination injury surveillance (SPEx) system (b) to evaluate the proportion of injuries and injury consequences reported by SPEx when compared to outcomes from a modified version of the Oslo Sports Trauma Research Centre (OSTRC) Overuse Injury Questionnaire. We followed 679 elite adolescent handball players over 31weeks using the SPEx system. During the last 7weeks, we also implemented a modified OSTRC questionnaire in a subgroup of 271 players via telephone interviews. The weekly response proportions to the primary SPEx questions ranged from 85% to 96% (mean 92%). SMS responses were received from 79% of the participants within 1day. 95% of reported injuries were classified through the telephone interview within a week, and 67% were diagnosed by medical personnel. Comparisons between reported injuries from SPEx and OSTRC demonstrated fair (κ=39.5% [25.1%-54.0%]) to substantial prevalence-adjusted bias-adjusted kappa (PABAK=66.8% [95% CI 58.0%-75.6%]) agreement. The average injury severity score difference between SPEx and the OSTRC approach was -0.2 (95% CI -3.69-3.29) of possible 100 with 95% limits of agreement from(-14.81-14.41). These results support the feasibility and validity of the SPEx injury surveillance system in elite youth sport. Future studies should evaluate the external validity of SPEx system in different cohorts of athletes.

Youth athletes' sustained involvement in elite sport: An exploratory examination of elements affecting their athletic participation

In this exploratory study, we first intended to identify the underlying structure of components affecting the sport participation of 1258 elite youth athletes from the USA through a principal component analysis of 23 items related to motives and barriers to participation and created for this study. A six-component solution was proposed, including college and professional aspirations and competence beliefs, coach and peer relationships, pressures from parents and coach, intrinsic and self-determined extrinsic motivation, external barriers, and non–self-determined extrinsic motivation. Noteworthy differences by age, gender, and race on those retained components were also reported. Lastly, results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that 28% of the variance in sport enjoyment was explained by all retained components. Given the rapid growth of travel teams, this study provides a timely cross-sectional and multisport assessment of the state of elite youth sport in the USA. In consideration of optimistic outcomes observed in this study compared to alarming attrition trends commonly found in the elite youth sport environment, this study may serve as a reference as to the elements that influence sustained participation that is indispensable in today's youth sport landscape. Results also provided important theoretical contributions with respect to motivational processes underlying elite sport participation. Practical implications with regards to the influence of intrapersonal, interpersonal, and barrier elements on elite sport participation are also presented.

Elite Youth Sports-The Year That Was 2017.

In 2017, considerable attention has been paid by researchers on early sports specialization for youth athletes. Issues related to injury, burnout, and talent development to name a few have been debated, particularly when contrasted against other opposing youth development approaches, such as a multisport approach. The increasing professionalization of young athletes, a particular concern of this author, is coupled with the ensuing physical and mental pressures on these youngsters, as highlighted by the 2 highlighted publications in this commentary. Moreover, the financial costs to parents to support talented youngsters lead me to conclude that we must not treat them as "mini-adult athletes." Trying to predict too far into the sporting future of a 9- or 10-year athlete can lead us to forgetting that they are just a 9 year, who typically wants to play, have fun, and be with their friends. Embarking on concentrated training programs, endless travel for tournaments, and an overemphasis on winning can be detrimental to participation rates as shown by recent data in the United States. Therefore, the challenge for researchers in elite youth sports is to ensure that practices we pursue with our young charges promote their health and well-being and that sports is for the benefit of the athlete and not the other way around.

Friend, foe, or both? A retrospective exploration of sibling relationships in elite youth sport

With the abundance of literature focusing on parental influence in sport, it is important to identify family dynamics that extend beyond parents to include siblings. In this study, sibling influence was explored through retrospective interviews with former elite youth female athletes (N = 4) and their sibling (n = 4) of the same sex who participated in the same sport. The purpose was to discover how siblings influence high performance sport participation. Two categories emerged from the data: positive experiences participating in the same sport (e.g. growth of relationship, development of understanding) and negative experiences participating in the same sport (e.g. sibling competition, emotional response). The participants’ descriptions coincide with observational learning and both deidentification and divergence processes. The data adds to the probable sibling experiences proposed in the Developmental Model of Sport Participation and provides insight on managing sibling relations in sport. Implications and practical applications of these findings are discussed.

The elite young athlete: strategies to ensure physical and emotional health.

This article presents a current review of the risk of physical and psychological injury associated with participation in elite youth sport, and suggests strategies to ensure the physical and emotional health of these young athletes. Although there is lack of epidemiological data, especially with regard to psychological injury, preliminary data suggest that the risk of injury is high in this population. While there is lack of incident and follow-up data, there is also concern regarding burnout, disordered eating, and the long-term consequences of injury. Modifiable injury risk factors identified include postural control, competition anxiety, life events, previous injury, and volume of training. There are presently no studies designed to determine the effectiveness of injury prevention measures in elite youth sports. However, there is adequate evidence arising from injury prevention studies of youth sports participants – including neuromuscular training, protective equipment, mental training to enhance self-esteem, and sport rules modification – to prevent injuries in elite youth sports settings. Although not tested, psychosocial prevention strategies such as adoption of task-oriented coping mechanisms, autonomous support from parents, and a proactive organizational approach also show promise in injury prevention.

A prospective multilevel examination of the relationship between cohesion and team performance in elite youth sport

The purpose of the current research was to (a) develop and establish the factor structure of the Czech and Slovak versions of the Youth Sport Environment Questionnaire (YSEQ; Eys, Loughead, Bray, & Carron, 2009) and (b) examine the relationship between team performance and cohesion with a sample of European elite youth sport teams. At time point one, with 352 elite youth athletes from 22 teams, support was obtained for a two factor structure underlying the YSEQ. Based on data collected at the second (N = 291) and third (N = 246) time points, multilevel analyses revealed that, when controlling for midseason cohesion, midseason team performance significantly and positively predicted task and social cohesion later in the season. Neither task nor social cohesion predicted team performance. In addition to adapting the YSEQ for use in a unique context, these findings reveal the nature of the cohesion-performance relationship in elite youth sport.

Elite Youth Sports.

Youth sport participation offers many benefits including the development of self-esteem, peer socialization, and general fitness. However, an emphasis on competitive success—often driven by goals of elite-level travel team selection, collegiate scholarships, Olympic and National team membership, and even professional contracts—has seemingly become widespread. This has resulted in increased pressure to begin high intensity training at young ages. Such an excessive focus on early intensive training and competition at young ages rather than skill development can lead to overuse injury and burnout.

'You don’t realize what you see!': the institutional context of emotional abuse in elite youth sport

Various discourses construct youth sport as a site for pleasure and participation, for positive development, for performance and for protection/safeguarding. Elite youth sport however continues to be a site for emotionally abusive coaching behaviour. Little attention has been paid to how the institutional context may enable or sustain this behaviour. Specifically, how do coaches and directors involved in high-performance women’s gymnastics position themselves in relationship to these discourses to legitimize the ways they organize and coach it? We drew on a Foucauldian framework to analyse the technologies and rationalities used by directors and coaches of elite women’s gymnastics clubs to legitimize and challenge current coaching behaviours. The results of the 10 semi-structured interviews showed how coaches and directors legitimized coaching behaviour using discourses of pleasure, protection, performance and of coaching expertise and assigning responsibility for current coaching behaviour to athletes, parents, (other) coaches and global and national policies.

‘Everything revolves around gymnastics’: athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport

The continuation of emotional abuse as a normalized practice in elite youth sport has received scholarly attention, often with the use of a Foucauldian framework. The use of sense-making, a theoretical framework that focuses on how meaning is created in ambiguous situations, may give additional insights into the continuation of emotionally abusive coaching practices. The purpose of this study was to apply the seven properties of sense-making to explore how athletes and parents made sense of coaching practices in elite women’s gymnastics. We interviewed 14 elite women gymnasts and their parents to examine how they made sense of what occurred during practices. The results show how the sense-making of athletes and parents was an ongoing activity that resulted in a code of silence and a normalization of abusive coaching practices.

Sport and Family Functioning: Strengthening Elite Sport Families

Families play an important role in society, both in human sustenance and individual development. Family systems theory views the family as a series of interconnected parts that when functioning properly, provide individual members with multiple benefits. Interaction with external systems, such as sport, school or church, can have positive and negative impacts on the family. It is unclear, however, what elements of sport relate to specific outcomes. The purpose of this study is to better understand the relationship between elite youth sport participation and family units, and how these two spheres, individually and in combination, impact family functioning. In-depth, purposeful interviews with seven “sport families” revealed that in addition to the depletion of resources (financial and time), elite sport engagement strongly detracts from the marital dyad and family unit receiving sufficient time and attention for proper functioning. The results also offer insight into how the leagues can be better managed such that they positively contribute to family functioning. Specifically, the results indicate that leagues can aid in strengthening family functioning through allowing families to have coaching input, and providing greater attention to scheduling, league expectations, and instrumental support.

Developing young athletes: The role of private sport schools in the Norwegian sport system

The aim of the paper is to analyse the increasingly prominent role of private sports schools in the development of elite athletes in Norway. The context for the analysis is the apparent paradox between the emergence of a network of sports schools, the most successful of which are private and require that parents pay a fee, and the social democratic values of Norway. Data were collected through a series of interviews with 35 respondents from nine stakeholder groups, including athletes, coaches, parents and sport school managers. The research describes an elite sport system that is successful in producing medal-winning athletes, but which is organisationally fragmented, uncoordinated and under-funded with regard to youth talent identification and development and susceptible to tensions between key actors. The primary analytical framework is Kingdon’s multiple streams framework augmented by path dependency theory. The findings include, a picture of an elite youth sport development system in which multiple and overlapping problems have received, at best, only partial policy solutions some of which, such as the growth of private sports schools, have emerged by default. When focusing attention on the relationship between structure and agency in the policy process it is argued that the government, through its inaction, has allowed sports schools the policy space to expand. The consequence is that the government has, whether deliberately or not, enabled the strengthening of a commercial elite youth sport development system, while still preserving its egalitarian and non-interventionist credentials.

Reviewing the Family Unit as a Stakeholder in Talent Development: Is It Undervalued?

As elite youth sport becomes more organized and professionalized, the role of the family is increasingly acknowledged as being significant in the development of young talent. High-profile examples across a range of professional sports, both positive and negative, have drawn attention toward this important stakeholder. Accordingly, this review first examines the key issues in relation to family involvement in talent development in relation to what is perceived as good and bad practice on behalf of the family. Next the key theoretical underpinning is considered, Family Systems Theory, and how it may be integrated within elite youth sport. Finally, the article concludes with a summary of where the current literature leaves us and where we can progress from here. Two possible inputs are suggested that could benefit the effectiveness of family involvement: a focus on the family holistically and a second on the role different family members can play.

Elite youth sports.

Youth sport participation offers many benefits including the development of self-esteem, peer socialization, and general fitness. However, an emphasis on competitive success—often driven by goals of elite-level travel team selection, collegiate scholarships, Olympic and National team membership, and even professional contracts—has seemingly become widespread. This has resulted in increased pressure to begin high intensity training at young ages. Such an excessive focus on early intensive training and competition at young ages rather than skill development can lead to overuse injury and burnout.

Alternative discourses in the coaching of high performance youth sport: exploring language of sustainability

This paper focuses on discourses of coaching in high performance sports. Through three interviews with a youth swimming coach, I explore ways of constructing coaching practice. I examine coaching as an educational practice and use discourse analysis as an analytic framework. The notion of interpretative repertoires is employed as a specific theoretical concept to consider the linguistic resources that the coach draws upon. The results suggest that a variety of resources exist to make sense of coaching. Interpretative repertoires promoting alternative views of performance (i.e. not simply winning), as well as sustainable repertoires that emphasize well-being, learning for life and an equitable coach-athlete relationship, may provide alternative ways of thinking about coaching elite youth sports.

Organizational Mission and Revenue Diversification among Non-profit Sports Clubs

The beneficial effects of diversified income portfolios are well documented in previous research on non-profit organizations. This study examines how different types of organizational missions affect the level of revenue diversification of organizations in one industry, a question that was neglected in previous research. Based on contingency theory, it is assumed that different missions are associated with different funding sources. Since missions can be complementary or conflicting, specific attention needs to be paid to the combination of missions. The sport sector is chosen as an empirical setting because non-profit sports clubs can have various missions while their overall purpose is promoting sport. Panel data from a nationwide survey of non-profit sports clubs in Germany are used for the analysis. The regression results show that revenue diversification is significantly determined by organizational mission. Historically, typical mission statements like promoting elite sport, tradition, conviviality, non-sport programs, and youth sport have a positive effect on revenue diversification, while clubs with a commercial orientation and a focus on leisure and health sport have more concentrated revenues. The findings have implications for club management in the sense that some missions are associated with higher financial risk and that the combination of missions should be chosen carefully.

Perceived coach-autonomy support, basic need satisfaction and the well- and ill-being of elite youth soccer players: A longitudinal investigation

Objectives Drawing from the basic needs theory [BNT; Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2002). An overview of self-determination theory. In E. L. Deci, & R. M. Ryan (Eds.), Handbook of self-determination research (pp. 3–33). Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press], the major purpose of the present study was to test a hypothesized sequence of temporal relationships between perceptions of coach-autonomy support, basic need satisfaction and indices of well- and ill-being. A subsidiary aim was to ascertain the assumed mediational role of basic need satisfaction in explicating the perceived autonomy support and well-/ill-being relationships over time. Design A field-based longitudinal design was employed. Methods Participants ( N = 54 males) from an elite youth soccer academy in the UK completed a multi-section questionnaire tapping the targeted variables on six occasions across two competitive seasons. Results Multi-level regression analyses revealed that perceptions of coach-autonomy support positively predicted within-person changes and between-person mean differences in basic need satisfaction and well-being over time. Satisfaction scores for the needs for competence and relatedness were found to predict within-person changes in subjective vitality. These same needs partially mediated the coach-autonomy support–subjective vitality link over the two seasons. Conclusions The findings partially support the tenets of BNT, and are discussed in terms of their practical application to participants involved in an elite youth sport setting.

A new view: exploring positive youth development in elite sport contexts

The purpose of this study was to investigate the presence of the setting features within elite youth sport contexts from a coach’s perspective. Coaches are key aspects to programme delivery and in the physical, psychological and social development of youth. Coaches of elite youth sport participants in particular have the responsibility of developing talented young people and, hence, play an important role in their lives and personal development. A qualitative triangulation approach including interviews and observations was used in the data collection and in the analysis of the practices and techniques of five elite youth sport coaches. Based on these findings and by amalgamating previous knowledge, a new view emerged outlining three key elements: the existence of an appropriate training environment, the provision of opportunities for physical, personal and social skill development, and the presence of supportive interactions. These elements are discussed as a framework for promoting positive youth development within elite youth sport settings.