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Internationally, very little research has been done into peer aggression and victimization in sports clubs. For this exploratory study, 98 coaches from various sports were interviewed in depth about their views on peer aggression and victimization and their ways of handling these issues. To put the coaches’ views and practices in perspective, they were contrasted with those of a reference group of 96 elementary school teachers and analyzed qualitatively. The interviews demonstrated that sports coaches currently were unaware of the construct of peer aggression, were unable to estimate the actual extent of peer aggression and victimization at their clubs, and were likely to overestimate their own impact, control, and effectiveness in handling the issue. This study underlines the need for coaches to develop their skills in recognizing and handling peer aggression and victimization and the need to develop sports-club-specific observation instruments and peer aggression programs.

The majority of research on children’s peer aggression has focused exclusively on the school context. Very few studies have investigated peer aggression in sports clubs. The prevalence and stability of peer aggression, prosocial behavior, and resource control strategies for children participating in three types of sports (martial arts, contact, and noncontact sports) were examined in two contexts: the sports club and the elementary school. We distinguished aggressive children with (i.e., Machiavellians) and without prosocial tendencies (i.e., coercive-aggressive children). Self-reports about experiences in the two contexts where gathered from 1,425 Dutch elementary school students (717 boys and 708 girls, fourth to sixth grade, mean age 11.25 years) who were participating in a sports club. We found roles for resource control strategies to be rather stable across contexts. The findings did not provide support for the “enhancement” assumption in these contexts with regard to martial arts participants.