Knowledgeable coaches help young people maintain the joy of sports

It is well known that more and more children and young people are physically inactive in their everyday lives. It is unfortunate when organised sport promotes physical and mental health in young people, develops social skills and leads to more healthy choices outside of sport as well.

“Previous research shows that children and young people who stop playing sports do so, among other things, because they no longer feel very much joy, inner motivation or competence in their sport. The support from the coach is also lacking”, says Andreas Ivarsson, Professor of Psychology at Halmstad University.

For many years, Andreas Ivarsson has researched how more young people can be active in organised sports, including through a focus on leaders and leadership. When the Swedish Ice Hockey Association in 2020 redesigned the coach education, first and foremost the one for children and young people, he was involved in the process.

“I had the opportunity to be involved and assist with theoretical and research-based knowledge when the Association developed its coach education”, says Andreas Ivarsson.

At the same time as the education developed and changed, he was able to follow the perceived change among the coaches.

“It’s quite unique as a researcher to be able to participate in studying regular activities, compared to developing a test training course and measuring it.”

The study compared the effects of the new coach education. A group of coaches who had completed the developed coach training was compared with a group that had not yet completed it. During and after the training, the coaches were asked to report different behaviors, more specifically how often they did what is referred to as positive coaching behaviors. Their answers were compared with the answers from the group of coaches who had not completed the developed training.

“What we saw was that the difference lay in competence-supporting behaviour, that as a coach you work actively to make the children feel competent in different ways. The coaches felt that they showed more such behaviors after they had completed the training.”

These behaviors are about autonomy, that the players feel that they can influence themselves and the training, and also the feeling of being competent, that is, that you actually get to succeed. Another behavior is about strengthening the sense of belonging, that as a coach you care about the young players.

The coaches’ experiences are reinforced by the Swedish Ice Hockey Association’s own membership statistics.

“Clubs that have many leaders who have completed the changed education tend to have more children and young people who start playing sports, and those clubs also retain more players.”

At the moment, studies that deal with the children’s and young people’s own experiences of the developed coach education are underway.

Text: Kristina Rörström

Photo: IStock and Dan Bergmark