Innovating Youth Tournament Schedules to Minimize School Absenteeism

Abstract

Participation in sport has been lauded for the myriad benefits provided to youth who engage. Similarly, attendance in school has been identified as a salient contributor to academic success. Thus, the purpose of the present study was to explore the extent to which participation in youth representative (“rep”) hockey in Ontario contributes to avoidable absences from traditional school contexts. Specifically, empirical data from 104 youth rep hockey tournaments, ranging from AE-AAA competitive levels, and the Tyke (7-year-olds) to Midget (17-year-olds) age ranks, were utilized to meet the study’s first purpose. The second purpose was to present an alternative and innovative way youth sport tournaments could be scheduled to minimize school absenteeism. The results of the current investigation show there is merit to the proposed shift in tournament scheduling. Specifically, more than 42,000 avoidable school absences, from the 104 tournaments sampled, could be mitigated with a simple adjustment to tournament schedules.

Absent on Absenteeism: Academic Silence on Student Absenteeism in Canadian Education

“…However, much of this literature is disjointed, with few of the same authors publishing on absenteeism more than once. Moreover, the majority of the authors are from fields other than education, such as health (French et al, 2013;Glaab et al, 2005;Ward et al, 2019); sports studies (Chard et al, 2020); and family studies (Sanderson et al, 2013). There are some education-based absenteeism studies (Birioukov, 2016;Birioukov-Brant & Brant-Birioukov, 2019;Carter & Leschied, 2010;Correia, 1996;Cowans, 2008;Darwich et al, 2012;Vellos & Vadeboncoeur, 2013); however, few of these research projects studied absenteeism for its own sake (Corville-Smith et al, 1998), instead viewing it as one of many variables (e.g., modifying the scheduling of youth athletic tournaments to minimize absenteeism).…”