Supporting Mental Health in Youth Sport: Introducing a Toolkit for Coaches, Clubs, and Organisations

The mental health of young people is of increasing concern, and early intervention prevention strategies are required. Youth sports are potentially effective environments within which to situate interventions due to high participation rates, familiarity to young participants, and the typically positive relationships held with adults within such spaces. However, coaches identify that they require more knowledge to better respond to mental health concerns that may be present among players. Here, we describe a research translation process in which an open-access, evidence-informed resource was developed to support coaches and sports clubs to better respond to athletes in need as well as to create environments that may protect against mental ill-health and promote well-being. The resource includes a toolkit—with an associated checklist—for recreational sport clubs to follow, a guide to responding to young people in need, and a short educational video. We suggest that these practical and applied resources, which can be immediately implemented, may assist in the provision of targeted and structured guidance for coaches’ first response intervention with vulnerable young people. Furthermore, these resources can support future efforts by being specifically tailored for the unique locations and cultures that vary among youth sport environments.

“Who’s Who?”: Identifying Cycling Coaches’ Biographies

Consideration of a learners’ biography is deemed to impact on their engagement with formal education and their connection with, and perceived relevance of, educational course content. It is considered equally important to understand coaches who enrol on formal coach learning in sport—their motivations, beliefs, values, existing knowledge, and previous life experiences. This research explored the individual biographies of eight neophyte cycling coaches over an 18-month period following the successful completion of a national governing body coach award. Following 23 formal semistructured interviews and 26 unstructured interviews, deductive thematic narrative analysis revealed three different typologies of coach: the “performance coach”; the “parent-coach”; and the “community coach.” Although the subjective details of the life stories varied according to their idiosyncratic perspective, all participants’ stories broadly followed one of these three identifiable narratives. Identifying different “typologies” of cycling coaches’ answers calls from coach developers to account for the specific backgrounds of coaches’ practices. It is hoped this research will begin the process of developing more personalised approaches to coach education.

A Communal Language for Decision Making in Team Invasion Sports

Invasion team sports coaches are faced with the problem of developing players who, in any given situation, can make decisions that lead to successful outcomes. Research into human decision making has established three widely accepted perspectives, which sports coaching has used to understand player decision making and inform practice: information processing, ecological psychology, and naturalistic decision making. As a result, coaches are challenged with perspective-specific terminology and having to draw connections between similar findings that are explained in quite different ways. This conceptual paper presents a plainer account of player decision making by proposing a communal language within a conceptual framework for decision making in invasion team sports. It is hoped that the proposed language and framework will, together, facilitate knowledge exchange between researchers and coaches for the betterment of player development.

Iranian Coaches Forgiveness and Relationship Quality to Their Athletes

Coaching has often been viewed as a context within which coaches operate to largely bring about changes in athlete’s performance and flourishing. One key factor to successful outcomes in coaching is the quality of the relationship between coaches and athletes. The coach–athlete relationship is at the heart of coaching; however, limited studies have been conducted on its antecedents. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between coaches’ forgiveness and perceived relationship quality toward their athletes through verifying the mediating role of interpersonal behaviors of coaches. A total of 270 Iranian coaches participated in the survey, and the data sets were analyzed using structural equation modeling. Results revealed that forgiveness positively predicted the coaches’ perceived relationship quality with their athletes, and this pathway was mediated by the coaches’ interpersonal behaviors.

The Acculturation Experiences of Elite Rugby Union Coaches

Currently, little is known about how elite coaches acculturate and how they manage their acculturation environment. This study examines the acculturation experiences of elite rugby union coaches and their management of multicultural squads. Five male elite coaches participated in the research. Each of the five coaches arguably fit a “best of the best” criterion, boasting between them multiple European and U.K. domestic championships as well as multiple Super Rugby titles with similar accomplishments at the international level across 15- and seven-a-side. Inductive thematic analysis of semistructured interview data revealed two emerging themes: (a) proactively managing personal acculturation, and (b) proactively managing player acculturation. Implications for coaches managing their own acculturation experience and their respective acculturation environments are discussed.

Stress and Burnout Experienced by Intercollegiate Swimming Head Coaches

The purpose of the present study was to investigate stress and burnout among intercollegiate head swimming coaches in the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA). Participants were 223 coaches working at NCAA institutions who completed the Coaching Issues Survey, which measures potential stressors experienced by coaches using four subscales of Win-Loss, Time-Role, Program-Success, and Athlete-Concerns. Time-Role was the most significant stressor and Win-Loss the lowest. Females reported significantly higher stress levels than their male counterparts, t(197) = −2.87, p = .01, on all subscales. Overall, levels of stress were not significant by NCAA divisions I, II, and III F(2,201) = 1.25, p = .29, suggesting that coaches across all levels experience stress. Findings highlight the importance of monitoring work–life balance across all collegiate athletic divisions and the need to understand why females report higher levels of stress and how this can be improved. Future research should consider how burnout can be avoided through coaching education and training interventions that might aid coaches who perceive their work environment as stressful.

Coach Development: Practical Recommendations for Interscholastic Sport

In the United States, interscholastic sport coach development occurs at the national, regional, and local levels, through higher education institutions, coaching associations, governing bodies of sport, and coach developers. Although each coach development pathway employs similar instructional methods, delivery formats, and often seeks the same outcome (i.e., certification or degree), each is unique in how they educate interscholastic coaches. Research studies on coach development have examined how interscholastic coaches learn, what they need to know, and what they need to know how to do. Furthermore, research studies in sport coaching have examined the role of a coach developer in facilitating, mentoring, and guiding coach development activities. Therefore, guided by the literature on coach development, the role of the interscholastic sport administrator as a coach developer, and insight gleaned from an exploratory descriptive study on interscholastic sport coaches, this best practices paper offers three steps the interscholastic sport administrator can implement in practice to provide ongoing coach development.

Curling Coaches’ Understanding of Their Role in Developing Performance Under Pressure Through Skill Acquisition

There are few studies examining coaches’ awareness of their role in developing performance under pressure. This study has explored the application of implicit and explicit learning theory for skill execution under pressure through the understanding of coaches. Seven curling coaches who teach adult novices were interviewed using a semistructured approach. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to explore their experiences and beliefs around skill acquisition and pressure. Key factors that emerged from the analysis were the coaches’ lack of awareness of their role in developing skill execution under pressure and the importance of coach education in creating that awareness. The recognition of the pressure that players will face in games and the potential for implicit techniques to be employed by the coaches demonstrated positive prospects for the application of implicit/explicit skill acquisition theory. The coaches’ experiences highlighted aspects unique to curling that will need to be considered in progressing the study’s findings. The distinction between skill setup and execution was also raised by coaches and requires further study to identify whether it impacts the effectiveness of building robust skills and the resulting coaching advice. The study provides recommendations for application of the theory and suggestions for future research.