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The article examines how UK sport organizations have framed race equality and diversity, in sport coaching. Semistructured interviews were used to gain insight into organizational perspectives toward ‘race’, ethnicity, racial equality, and whiteness. Using Critical Race Theory and Black feminism, color-blind practices were found to reinforce a denial that ‘race’ is a salient factor underpinning inequalities in coaching. The dominant practices employed by key stakeholders are discussed under three themes: equating diversity as inclusion; fore fronting meritocracy and individual agency; and framing whiteness. We argue that these practices sustain the institutional racialised processes and formations that serve to normalize and privilege whiteness. We conclude that for Black and minoritised ethnic coaches to become key actors in sport coaching in the UK ‘race’ and racial equality need to be centered in research, policy and practice.

Despite its prevalence as a sensitizing concept for research in psychology, the sociology of sport literature on microaggressions is limited and it has not been used to understand sociocultural aspects of sport coaching. In this poststructural creative analytic practice, we provide three short stories of microaggressions in men’s sport coaching and their plausible negative effects on mental health. An aim of this paper is to begin to map an understanding of the intersection of sport coaching, mental health, and social identities. To achieve this aim, we weave together scholarship on microaggressions and the sociology of sport and sport coaching with our stories and interpretations. Practical implications are offered and a new, strength based discourse is introduced to the field in the form of microaffirmations.

This study examined the psychological contract of volunteer youth sport coaches to determine the content, variation, and influences to its development. Interviews were conducted with 22 volunteer coaches of team sports, representing different levels of play (recreational, competitive), coaching tenure (novice, experienced), and gender (female, male), who were sampled to account for the potential variation based on these demographic factors. The findings revealed that volunteer coaches possessed both transactional and relational expectations of themselves and their club. Coaches’ most frequently cited expectations of themselves were technical expertise (transactional), and leadership (relational), while their most frequently cited expectations of the club were fundamental resources and club administration (transactional), and coach support (relational). Variation was found by different levels of play (recreational, competitive) and coaching tenure (novice, experienced). The coaches’ psychological contract was shaped predominately by sources external to the club. Implications for managing the psychological contract of volunteer youth sport coaches and directions for future research are discussed.

The structural components of sports competitions and the characteristics of sport practices vary significantly. These differences may translate into different optimal employment arrangements for the professional coaches (those who prepare teams and athletes for competitions). While there has been academic inquiry into the practice of sport coaching, there has been little apparent research into the industrial organization of sport coaches. This paper presents a formal model of the coaching practice. The coaching roles as strategists and trainers are distinguished, variation in the significance of the connections in the nexus of team to individual relations is identified, and the various methods of sport preparation are classified. Predictions of the employment arrangements based on model parameters are made and related to some established stylized facts and survey results from both cycling training coaches and athletes. The model and data corroborate that cycling coaches be hired by the individual athletes not their cycling teams. JEL classifications: J22, J24, L23, L83