Enjoyment of sport and coach education

Collaboration between researchers and sports associations

Sports and health

Active participation in organised sport promotes the physical and mental health of children and young people, develops social skills and leads to more healthy choices outside of sport. This is particularly important at a time when more and more young people are physically inactive in their daily lives. However, for the positive effects to be as far-reaching as possible, children and young people need to be active in sport for as long as possible.

Children and young people stop playing sports

At the same time, many Swedish sports associations are seeing a trend of more and more children and young people choosing to end their participation in organised sport prematurely.

"Like many other sports, ice hockey is struggling with the fact that people stop their sporting journey", says John Lind, responsible for development and research at the Swedish Ice Hockey Association, and continues:

"We know from our own statistics that from the time children enter our activities at the age of five or six, over 50 per cent have stopped ten years later. For us, it is important not only to understand why they leave, but also to find strategies to keep them for as long as possible, and to change and improve our activities so that they actually want to stay longer", says John Lind.

How can the trend be reversed?

The research, which is being conducted in collaboration with the Swedish Ice Hockey Association is based on a compilation of other research studies and our own interviews and surveys in team sports, has revealed several factors that increase the risk of children and young people dropping out.

"We have found that children and young people who leave their sport have a low sense of joy, low levels of inner motivation, experience low support from their coach and feel that they have low competence in their sport", says Andreas Ivarsson, professor of psychology.

"We have also asked ourselves what it takes for children and young people to stay in their sport over a longer period and found that the coach's leadership plays a key role in children and young people's motivation, enjoyment and self-esteem", says Andreas Ivarsson.

Evidence-based coach training

As a result of the research and collaboration that has taken place, the coach education is now more evidence-based. It focuses to a greater extent on illustrating and getting the participating coaches to reflect on the factors that are important for getting more children and young people to stay in sport. This is done, for example, by emphasising what children and young people themselves describe as enjoyable about sport.

The coach training also helps the participating coaches to identify and reinforce behaviours that can promote the joy and inner motivation and the feeling of being competent and appreciated among the sport-active children and young people.

4000 coaches have participated

The developed coach training programme is offered all over Sweden and almost 4000 coaches have participated so far. The participants represent around 300 of Sweden's 330 ice hockey clubs that have children's and youth teams.

" What I am particularly passionate about is the leadership parts and how you can strengthen the children's inner motivation with concrete actions. It has also given me a better understanding of how I am perceived as a leader", says Mats Levander, coach and youth leader in Piteå HC.