Youth Development Through Sport

After examining the impact of the physical environment on youth, the National Research Institute of  Medicine suggested eight main features that should be present in the context of community programs in order to facilitate positive youth development. These features are gaining increasing support from youth sport research as they offer an additional understanding of the context in which youth sport should be promoted.

The eight main features are as below:-

1.Physical and Psychological Safety

Physical and psychological safety in sport settings refers to the existence of safe and healthy facilities and practices that encourage secure and respectful peer interactions. Research indicates that the athlete-peer microsystem has an impact on the child's sense of physical self-worth and on the adolescent's perceived competence and self-evaluations. Therefore, it is important that peer interactions are respectful in a sport in order to build confidence in youth and allow them to enjoy their participation in sport.

2.Appropriate Structure

This feature suggests the existence of clear and consistent expectations regarding rules and boundaries. Develop a sport participation model that provides some guidelines for the structure of youth sports programs(e.g. a shift in focus from deliberate play during childhood to deliberate practice during adolescence). Thus one could contend that providing activities that are properly structured has the potential to develop positive, well adjusted and optimistic youth.

3.Supportive Relationship

The third setting feature relates to strong support, positive communication, and connectedness. A coach can influence a child's perceived competence, enjoyment, and motivation and play a role in a child's psychological, social, and physical growth. Training coaches about basic principles of positive youth development are likely to result in better youth programs and sporting environments that promote a supportive relationship.

4. Opportunities To Belong

The fourth setting feature highlights the importance of meaningful inclusion, social engagement, cultural competence in youth programs. Feeling a sense of belonging(i.e.being part of a team, developing friendships). Healthy relationships can be encouraged by coaches who build a sense of team unity and cohesion.

5.Positive Social Norms

This feature relates to the development of values and morals rather than antisocial and reckless behaviors. Although a growing body of literature highlights some of the potentially negative social norms associated with youth sport participation(e.g.violence, aggression, poor sportspersonship, and low morality reasoning), youth sports programs have the potential to develop positive values such as fair play, sportspersonship, cooperation, assertion,
responsibility, empathy, and self-control.

6.Support Of Efficacy and Mattering

The sixth setting feature focuses on the importance of empowering youth and supporting their autonomy as they work to build their community. Research in sport emphasizes the need for coaches to develop autonomous athletes; giving youth the opportunity to choose their level of involvement in sport or contribution within a sport will empower them and also increase their intrinsic motivation for the sport.

7.Opportunities For Skill Building

The seven setting feature emphasizes the importance of learning experiences.
As previously outlined, sampling a variety of different sports through early diversification provides this opportunity, as youth have the chance to learn a variety of sports skills and are able to meet and interact with a variety of different people(i.e peers, coaches). Furthermore, deliberate play and deliberate practice activities afford children and adolescents the opportunity to grow and develop their motor skills in appropriate settings.

8.Integration Of family, School, and Community Efforts

This feature promotes the melding of the youth person's environments to increase communication and lessen conflict and dissonance. In youth sport, parents play a key role in athletes' development of other supportive relationships, such as coach-athlete interactions. Further, the structure and environment of a community appear to play a role in youth persistence and progression in the sport, given research suggesting that smaller cities tend to produce more professional athletes.

Last but not least, I would like to add that the coach must create and nurture an atmosphere of trust, affection, and empathy to establish a relationship between the coach and the athlete.

Hence this relationship will give a meaning of life and a joyful journey of learning for the coach and athlete.


Thank You.