Competitive Readiness: Developmental Considerations to Promote Positive Youth Development in Competitive Activities

Abstract

Competitive experiences have the potential to empower youth. Understanding the conditions under which young people can grow through competition is necessary to identify how competitive experiences can optimally support youth as engaged participants and people. This paper serves as a novel integration of previous research aimed toward practitioners. The purpose of this paper is to provide adult (and youth) leaders with empirically-based, practically meaningful guidance to integrate practices that support competitive readiness for youth development. To clarify the youth competitive readiness debate, this paper adopts a process-oriented, developmental perspective. We first define and provide background on youth development. Second, we put forth guiding postulates and their application to practice for organized competitive experiences for positive youth development promotion. We argue that youth are “ready” to compete not just when they can survive competitive experiences, but thrive through them. Interactions between individual, contextual, and developmental factors over time influence fluctuations in a young person’s state of competitive readiness. In this way, competitive readiness is an ongoing process that encompasses the individual needs of the child in relation to the environment.

Sports Academy as an Avenue for Psychosocial Development and Satisfaction of Youth Athletes in Ethiopia

“…Research findings show that engagement plays a key role in mediating between the contextual influences and developmental outcomes in youth athletes [32]. However, youth athletes' learning and developmental perspectives, and the meaning attached within the learning context, appear crucial [74].…”

Fostering Youth Female Athletes’ Decision-Making Skills through Competitive Volleyball: A Mixed Methods Design

“…Although PYD within educational and recreational sport has been widely studied [ 17 ], competitive sport has barely been addressed in PYD research [ 47 ], due to the traditional belief of coaches in the incompatibility of life skills development and sports performance [ 48 ] and to the differences between the PYD paradigm and the institutional and organizational identity of most sports leagues and clubs at present [ 49 ]. However, competitive sport can help youth develop their social capital, contributing to the interiorization of important assets for adult life, such as the importance of success, resilience, performing under pressure, and pulling themselves together after a defeat [ 50 ].…”