Coaching effectiveness in competitive youth contact sports and martial arts: athletes' and coaches' perceptions

Contact sports and martial arts can provide an avenue for young athletes' development in physical and psychosocial aspects. Athletes' consistent development of competence, confidence, connection, and character (the 4 Cs) are the desired athlete outcomes for optimal development in a defined sport context, reflecting the extent of coaching effectiveness and the quality of youth sport programming. The purpose of this study was to assess athletes' 4 Cs with respect to their age, gender, competitive level, and birthdate.

Athletes (n = 454; 12-18 years of age) and their coaches (n = 45) from boxing, judo, karate, kickboxing, taekwondo, and wrestling completed validated measures of the 4Cs of athlete development. Analyses were conducted for each sport outcome separately to examine differences in athletes' responses. A descriptive account of the athletes' responses and univariate statistics (e.g., one-way ANOVAs) were used to assess participants' responses.

Results revealed that the athletes scored high in each outcome. According to the comparisons, the older group of athletes had significantly higher competence and connection scores. Girls perceived less confidence than boys. Competence scores of athletes at local and international competitive levels differ significantly, with scores increasing with competitive level, while a significant decrease in perceived character was observed. Moreover, the athletes born in the first quartile of a year had significantly lower character scores.

Findings suggest that the athletes have generally gained positive attributes across the examined outcomes. However, significant differences observed in the athletes' examined characteristics indicate areas for improvement in coaching practices and youth sport programming. The findings were discussed in light of the extant coaching literature, and suggestions for future studies were provided.