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How can coaches achieve “success” within a team when the goalposts for what “success” is are off-centre from the beginning? A research paper titled “Is Winning Everything?” written by Sean P. Cumming et al. and published in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology (2007), articulates the importance in youth sport coaching of nuancing what is actually meant when we set a vision of “success”, and how this can be achieved with the right motivational climate.
The common notion in sport, Cumming writes, equates success with winning and failure with losing. The default, traditional, yet perhaps unhealthy, outlook of an athletic event is “a struggle for supremacy in which every coach and athlete seeks to emerge victorious.” This, however, is becoming an increasingly outdated interpretation of one of life’s most arterial sources of a healthy lifestyle, particularly when it concerns young athletes.
In a similar vein to that of Mary D. Fry’s article discussed in Issue 41, Cummings et al. further suggest the benefit of a more developmental sporting model, one in which success exceeds individual and team statistics to instead favour more controllable goals of maximum effort, working to develop one’s skills, and enjoying the social and competitive aspects of the sport experience.
Now, while Cumming et al. recognise that it would be naïve and unrealistic to assert that winning is not important, they argue that it significantly should not be prioritised or isolated as the sole ambition – this particularly applies to youth sport up to around age 15. Developing psychological and social characteristics while improving physical skills and fitness should inhabit the pedestal of youth sports coaching. When young athletes perceive beating their opponents to be the sole objective, the potential for growth and development in sport is wasted. There is much value to be gained from both winning and losing.
For this to work, however, adults must place winning within a healthy perspective by creating the right motivational climate. Achievement Goal Theory can provide a good vantage point from which to compare the importance of winning with other factors within youth sport, incorporating both personal and environmental aspects of goal-directed achievement behaviour.
Within this theory, J.G. Nicholls (1989) identified two different ways of defining success, one of which most people demonstrate over the other:
Empirical evidence has shown that the latter fosters adaptive achievement behaviours such as persistence in the face of failure, exerting effort, and selecting challenging goals, regardless of ability. Similar distinctions between approaches to success have been identified by other researchers, J.G. Duda (1993) for example, who instead uses the terms Mastery (task-involvement) and Performance (ego-involvement).
This kind of theory also addresses environmental factors that foster mastery or ego involvement. Chief among these factors, Cumming et al. write, is the motivational climate produced by significant adults. Coaches are therefore advised to create a mastery-involving climate that encourages young athletes to focus on their own personal development so to produce the most valuable experiences for their athletes. This can be achieved by reducing the ultimate importance of winning relative to other prized motives such as skill development, effort, and social interaction.
Conversely, ego-involving climates occur when coaches promote intra-team rivalries, favour the more talented players, or punish players for mistakes, and so are advised to avoid these behaviours.
Mastery-involving climates are also associated with higher levels of enjoyment and intrinsic motivation within youth sport. Research by D.C. Treasure and G.C. Roberts (1998) similarly found a positive association between mastery-involving climates and the idea that effort is integral to success. This is in addition to evidence of reduced pre- and post-match anxiety.
While many coaches believe that a winning record is a vital aspect in their players’ attitudes towards them, R.E. Smith’s research (1978) shows this not to be the case and, conversely, that winning is not a prerequisite for enjoyment and positive attitudes towards a coach. In a study involving the 9 best-liked and 11 least-liked coaches of a 51-team youth baseball league, best-liked coaches were found to have lower winning percentages than the least-liked. Of course, as sport progresses with age, ability level, and financial investment, the scale, with winning at one end and developmental aspects at the other, balances out as team wins gain importance. However, in youth sport, it’s more acceptable for winning to take a backseat as to prioritise personal growth.
Cumming et al. also conducted their own study on both male and female basketball players between the ages of 10 and 15. Their results corroborated that mastery- and ego-involving climates were negatively correlated with one another, although to a lesser extent than previous studies. Mastery climate related positively and significantly to won-lost percentage and all evaluative measures, including enjoyment, coach evaluations, and perceived parental liking of the coach. In contrast, ego climate scores were unrelated to won-lost percentage and negatively related to evaluative measures. Overall, winning proved generally unrelated to enjoyment and weakly related to coach evaluation.
While coach evaluation positively correlated with win-loss percentage, players within climates perceived as mastery-involving generally liked playing for their coach more, rated their coaches as more knowledgeable, thought their coach was better at teaching kids, and had a greater desire to play for them again. Players within ego climates communicated the opposite, but not dramatically.
So, is winning everything within youth sports? Winning, no. Success, perhaps but only if that success is defined in a developmentally productive way. I’ll end with a slight addition to the old adage about success and persistence.:
If at first you don’t succeed, take a look at how you’ve defined “success”, and later you can get to "try, and try again".
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