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The purpose of the present study was to describe patterns in the dynamics of families of talented athletes throughout their development in sport. Four families, including three families of elite rowers and one family of an elite tennis player were examined. The framework provided by Ericsson, Krampe, and Tesch-Römer (1993) to explain expert performance served as the theoretical basis for the study. Ericsson et al. suggested that the acquisition of expert performance involves operating within three types of constraints: motivational, effort, and resource. In-depth interviews were conducted with each athlete, parent, and sibling to explore how they have dealt with these three constraints. A total of 15 individual interviews were conducted. Results permitted the identification of three phases of participation from early childhood to late adolescence: the sampling years, the specializing years, and the investment years. The dynamics of the family in each of these phases of development is discussed.

The purpose of this study was to examine the development of six leader-athletes. In-depth qualitative interviews were used to explore the various activities that leader athletes engaged in from an early age as well as the roles and influences that peers, coaches, and parents played within these activities. Results indicated that leadership development in sport focused on developing four central components: high skill, strong work ethic, enriched cognitive sport knowledge, and good rapport with people. The types of activities engaged in throughout development as well as receiving feedback, acknowledgement, support, cognitive engagement, mature conversations with adults, and physical encounters with older peers are important social influences that can play an instrumental role in the formation of these four central tenets.

It is well established that coach learning and athlete outcomes can be enhanced through participation in Coach Development Programs (CDPs). Researchers advocate that the quality of CDPs can be improved by: (a) placing a greater emphasis on facilitating coaches’ interpersonal behaviours (Lefebvre, Evans, et al., 2016), (b) using appropriate and systematic evaluation frameworks to guide the evaluation of interpersonally-focused CDPs (Evans et al., 2015), and (c) incorporating behaviour change theories into the design and implementation of these CDPs (Allan et al., 2017). In doing so, the relevance of CDP content and the uptake of this content among coaching practitioners may be enhanced. Transformational leadership theory provides a valuable guiding framework for designing CDPs that aim to promote positive development in youth sport. Thus, the goal of the present paper is to outline the development of a novel, evidence-informed CDP: The Transformational Coaching Workshop and to provide practical strategies for the implementation of this workshop.

This paper proposes a three-step method of evaluating high performance coaches involving feedback from the athletes. First, data are collected using an instrument such as the Coaching Behavior Scale for Sport (CBS-S: Côté, Yardley, Hay, Sedgwick, & Baker, 1999). Second, a summary report is prepared with descriptive information regarding the frequency of behaviors demonstrated by the coach that can be compared to previous results or to a criterion measure. The third step involves appropriate personnel reviewing the report and subsequently providing guidance for individual coach development. This three-step appraisal method provides useful evaluative feedback to coaches and has been used in several sport programs in Canada, the United States, and Australia.

The purpose of this study was to gain understanding of adolescents’ positive and negative developmental experiences in sport. Twenty-two purposefully sampled adolescent competitive swimmers participated in a semistructured qualitative interview. Content analysis led to the organization of meaning units into themes and categories (Patton, 2002). Athletes suggested their sport involvement facilitated many positive developmental experiences (i.e., related to challenge, meaningful adult and peer relationships, a sense of community, and other life experiences) and some negative developmental experiences (i.e., related to poor coach relationships, negative peer influences, parent pressure, and the challenging psychological environment of competitive sport). Findings underline the important roles of sport programmers, clubs, coaches, and parents in facilitating youths’ positive developmental experiences in sport, while highlighting numerous important directions for future research. Implications for coach training and practice are outlined.

The purpose of the current study was to examine two different trajectories of sport participation and explore any similarities or differences that may result regarding personal development and sport outcomes. Seventy-four youth athletes (40 “specializers” and 34 “samplers”) were recruited for the current study and four measures were employed to assess sport experiences and outcomes. Discriminant function analyses revealed no differences between groups in asset possession or sources of enjoyment however, differences were reported in sport experiences and burnout. The “samplers” reported more experiences regarding the integration of sport and family as well as linkages to the community. Although the “specializers” reported higher levels of physical/emotional exhaustion than did the “samplers,” they also reported more experiences related to diverse peer groups. The differences highlight the importance of examining specific pathways of development in sport to gain a deeper understanding of youths’ experiences in sport.

The purpose of this study was to report the knowledge used by expert high-performance gymnastic coaches in the organization of training and competition. In-depth interviews were conducted with 9 coaches who worked with male gymnasts and 8 coaches who worked with female gymnasts. Qualitative analyses showed that coaches of males and coaches of females planned training similarly, except that coaches of females appeared to emphasize esthetic and nutritional issues to a greater extent. Coaches of males revealed more concerns about the organization of gymnasts’ physical conditioning. Analysis indicated that expert gymnastic coaches of males and females are constantly involved in dynamic social interactions with gymnasts, parents, and assistant coaches. Many areas of coaches’ organizational work, such as dealing with the athletes’ personal concerns and working with parents, are not part of the structure of coaches’ training programs and emerged as crucial tasks of expert gymnastic coaches for developing elite gymnasts.

The developmental histories of 32 players in the Australian Football League (AFL), independently classified as either expert or less skilled in their perceptual and decision-making skills, were collected through a structured interview process and their year-on-year involvement in structured and deliberate play activities retrospectively determined. Despite being drawn from the same elite level of competition, the expert decision-makers differed from the less skilled in having accrued, during their developing years, more hours of experience in structured activities of all types, in structured activities in invasion-type sports, in invasion-type deliberate play, and in invasion activities from sports other than Australian football. Accumulated hours invested in invasion-type activities differentiated between the groups, suggesting that it is the amount of invasion-type activity that is experienced and not necessarily intent (skill development or fun) or specificity that facilitates the development of perceptual and decision-making expertise in this team sport.