The study undertaken by Vella Stewart, Oades Lindsay, and Crowe Peterson investigated the eagerness of coaches in implementing and desiring positive results for athletes directed towards youth development. They examined whether coaches needed the outcomes from the youth athletes that exceeded their on-field success. The results were aimed at providing instructions and teachings to the youths, which contributed to their positive development. This development emphasized on availing the resources and building the inner playing strengths from the teenager athletes. The theory of this research in regard to the positive development of young people indicates that constructing on natural resources was efficient as compared to the control of human roles. In this respect, the researchers hoped to get healthy, secure, happy, fully occupied, morally upright, and valuable contributions from the youths. The researchers of this study concluded that several assessments showed they had managed to promote athletes’ relations, interpersonal expertise, issue-solving, strength of mind, obligation in academics, and interaction skills among others successfully.
The major role of this research was to discuss the role played by the coaches when facilitating positive development in an adolescent athlete. In their study, the researchers stressed that the coaches had an essential purpose when establishing a suited agenda in terms of development, which implemented the personal resources and strengths of the youths. Similarly, the adults were also noted as examples in impacting compassionate associations among the youth and conveying constructive developmental results.
In this research, there were 22 participants who acted as the contributing coaches for youths taking part in different categories of sports. In this respect, the participants represented different games including soccer and softball. These coaches were not categorized based on performance or competition since they were characterized by delight, short-term goals, and participation in health-associated results. The method used by the researchers of this study to attain a deep perceptive on the functions played by coaches in their coaching practice was qualitative. Essentially, the researchers used semi-structured interviews to interrogate the participating coaches when retrieving the data required. These interviews had 7 open-ended questions that aimed at obtaining broad perspectives from the participants. The researchers of this study contacted all the coaches either through sporting clubs or local high schools followed by interviews in places of choice.
The researchers considered the endings expected by the coaches for the sportspersons due to the coaching trails. In order to achieve these results, the researchers gathered the necessary codes each representing a different positive developmental attributes including interpersonal, life, and positive psychological skills. The results implied that the coaches play significant roles in enhancing the relations between athletes and boosting their performances in various issues.
From this study, the authors remarked that the character related to youth responsibility bestowed on the coaches was not entirely practical as the results indicated otherwise. In this light, the coaches were concentrated on performance enhancement without paying attention to the emphasis on the general constructive development.
While this study should be considered as a positive contribution to coaching practice, some criticisms have been noted about it. The fact that the researchers used open-ended questions when interviewing the participants ensured that the answers obtained were not anticipated or desired by the interviewer. In this regard, obtaining the genuine perspectives and ensuring confidentiality of participants facilitated the presentation of reliable data. Moreover, a better methodology could have been applied to improve on the accuracy of the data.
Reference
Vella, S., Oades, L. & Crowe, P. (2011). The role of the coach in facilitating positive youth development: Moving from theory to practice. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 23(1), 33-48.