HIGH SCHOOL ATHLETES

High School Athletes

High School Athletes

Introduction

School sports in America are built on a strong educational foundation. For example, the mission statement of the National Federation of State High School Associations indicates that it “will promote participation and sportsmanship to develop good citizens through interscholastic activities which provide equitable opportunities, positive recognition and learning experiences to students while maximizing the achievement of educational goals” (NFHS Mission Statement, n.d.). Sports for high school students, then, are justified for their educational, physical, personal and social-emotional growth values.

In recent years there has been increased interest in using sport as an arena for developing life skills in youth with life skills being viewed as those personal characteristics and skills such as goal setting, emotional control, self-esteem, and hard work ethic that can be facilitated or developed in sport and potentially transferred for use in non-sport settings. For example, in the Year 2000 a special issue of the journal, Community Youth Development was devoted to an examination of extracurricular activities, especially sport, and their potential to contribute to the health of youth and community development (Terry, 2000). Similarly, in 1997 the exercise and sport science journal, Quest, devoted a special issue to teaching life skills through sport. Finally, Petitpas, Cornelius, Van Raalte and Jones (2005) recently developed a framework for fostering life skills through sport and physical activity programs for youth.

Most of the youth development through sport emphasis in exercise and sport science has been focused on developing after school physical activity programs designed to teach underserved youth personal and social responsibility skills through sport participation (Martinek & Hellison, 1997; Hellison & Walsh, 2002). While these programs are an exciting and much needed development in our field, less attention has been focused on how school sport coaches can teach students similar “life skills” through participation. In fact, most coaching education programs fail to discuss personal and social development through sport to any great degree, and instead focus on skill instruction, physical training, injury prevention and performance enhancement, despite the fact that in the United States high school coaches work with over seven million student-athletes (NFSHSA, 2005).

It is encouraging that several researchers have begun to examine coaches' roles in the personal development of their athletes. In a study of elite gymnastics coaches, for example, Côté and Salmela (1996) found the coaches not only cared about their gymnasts' athletic development but also their personal development. However, because of the broad scope of the investigation, the researchers did not specifically focus on how these coaches were involved in their athletes' personal development and the issues they perceived as most relevant.

Looking at volunteer youth coaches, McCallister and her colleagues (2000) found that coaches recognized the value of teaching a wide range of personal values and skills to their athletes. However, they struggled to explain how they did so and were also inconsistent in their explanations. In contrast, using more experienced coaches Gilbert, Gilbert and Trudel (2001a, 2001b) found that they reported more well thought out, purposeful strategies ...