Knowledge, Attitudes, and Beliefs of Youth Sports Coaches Regarding Sport Volume Recommendations and Sport Specialization

Abstract

Overuse injuries in youth athletes are becoming increasingly common which may be a result of the prevalence of year-round specialized sport participation. Previous research has identified sport volume recommendations related to months per year, hours per week, and simultaneous participation in multiple sports leagues. Coaches are a primary influence on a youth athlete's decision to specialize in a single sport. Therefore, identifying coaches' baseline beliefs and perceptions is important for developing strategies to educate coaches about safe sport participation. A total of 253 youth sport coaches (207 males) completed an anonymous online questionnaire regarding knowledge of sport volume recommendations and attitudes and beliefs regarding sport specialization. Eligible participants were required to serve as a head or assistant coach of a youth sport team in the past 12 months whose members were between the ages of 12 and 18. Most coaches were unaware of recommendations regarding the maximum number of months per year (79.4%), hours per week in one sport (79.3%), or number of simultaneous leagues for an athlete to participate in to reduce injury (77.6%). Fewer than half (43.2%) of all coaches were "very" or "extremely" concerned about the risk of injury in youth sports. A majority (60.1%) believed that sport specialization was either "quite a bit" or "a great deal" of a problem. Two-thirds (67.2%) responded that year-round participation in a single sport was either "very" or "extremely" likely to increase an athlete's risk of injury. Although the responses to this survey were predominantly from coaches from one state, our results suggest that coaches are unaware of sport volume recommendations but are concerned about specialization. Future efforts are needed to communicate these recommendations to coaches in order to reduce the risk of overuse injury in youth sports.

Exploring Coaches' Perceptions of Youth Sport Specialization: A Comparison of High School and Club Sport Contexts

“…Previous authors have broadly examined youth athletes' patterns of specialized or diversified sport participation, 4,[21][22][23][24] whereas recent researchers 25,26 have begun to explore underlying attitudes toward this topic in high school athletes and coaches. However, we are the first to examine the perceptions of sport specialization between high school and club sport coaches using a validated perceptual scale of their attitudes and beliefs.…”

Impact of youth sports specialisation on career and task-specific athletic performance: a systematic review following the American Medical Society for Sports Medicine (AMSSM) Collaborative Research Network’s 2019 Youth Early Sport Specialisation Summit

“…Specialisation is ‘intense training in a single sport at the exclusion of others’ and is commonly viewed as a mechanism for maximising athletic performance potential. Athletes, parents and coaches generally believe specialisation is important, and perhaps necessary, for increasing skill in a specific sport often with the goal of making a high school team or for obtaining a collegiate athletic scholarship 1–3…”

Attitudes and Beliefs towards Sport Specialization, College Scholarships, and Financial Investment among High School Baseball Parents

“…For example, a National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I baseball program only has 11.7 scholarships available that it can distribute across a maximum of 27 players on a 35-player roster [11]. Furthermore, it is also unknown whether the parental attitudes and beliefs towards the potential benefits of sport specialization in adolescent baseball athletes are similar to those reported in prior studies of adolescent athletes from various sports [12]. The parents of baseball athletes in particular may hold different attitudes and beliefs as a result of the MLB Pitch Smart campaign, which has been actively discouraging specialization at all levels of youth baseball since the start of the dissemination campaign in 2014 [3].…”