Luc J. Martin

Coaches help shape sport environments and athlete experiences. However, many coach development programs do not adequately teach the knowledge and skills necessary for holistic athlete development. Accordingly, a positive youth development program, the 1616 Program (1616), was created to foster developmentally rich opportunities for youth ice hockey players. To overcome many current coach development program shortcomings, 1616 includes a coach-specific segment grounded in coaching effectiveness, leadership, and behavior change literature. We explored the coach segment’s impact using a mixed-method convergent parallel design with coaches across North America. In total, 36 coaches ( n = 3 females; M _age = 43.8 years; SD = 5.33 years) with an average of 10.1 years ( SD = 8.04) of coaching experience completed questionnaires. We interviewed nine coaches ( n = 1 female; M _age = 43.0 years; SD = 8.04 years) with an average of 8.5 years ( SD = 3.73) of coaching experience. Results suggest that coaches felt that athlete personal assets improved while describing improvements in their own behavior change markers, efficacy beliefs, and interpersonal and leadership skills. Despite noting areas for improvement, coaches who completed the 1616 Program generally improved their self-perception, experienced more positive athlete interactions, and appreciated the high-quality program design and delivery.

Scholars studying cultural diversity in groups have largely overemphasized implications for objective outcomes, overlooking relevant processes that influence those outcomes (i.e., teamwork) and team member competencies related to cultural diversity (i.e., intercultural competence). Therefore, the purpose of this study was to longitudinally investigate the relationship between two indicators of cultural diversity (i.e., national variety and language disparity), team members' intercultural competence, and perceptions of teamwork. A total of 501 professional women football players ( M _age = 22.54 years, ± 4.46) from 21 teams across the top leagues in France (D1 = 177; D2 = 324) completed questionnaires pertaining to intercultural competence and teamwork, with 342 responding at all three time‐points. Measures of national cultural variety and language disparity were computed using the Blau index and Matiti index, respectively. Using multilevel latent growth curve modeling, results showed that intercultural competence tended to be positively associated with perceptions of teamwork and that these relationships became stronger in teams that were more diverse. The results also indicated that this positive effect varied as a function of the type of cultural diversity being considered and that the relationship patterns were stable across time. For example, intercultural competence only positively predicted teamwork execution in teams with high levels of national–cultural variety. Such nuanced findings are discussed in detail herein, with implications to the literature and future research directions being put forward. Further, major strengths pertaining to the elite nature and size of the sample and the focus on women's sport are emphasized.

The purpose of this review was to summarize knowledge on formal interest constructs across common youth domains and to identify literature gaps. The Joanna Briggs Institute’s guidelines and the PRISMA-ScR extension guided this study’s design. Five databases were searched: APA PsycInfo, SPORTDiscus, Sports Medicine & Education Index, Education Source, and Web of Science. Peer-reviewed, English-language studies with participants aged 5–25 were eligible for inclusion. There were 228 articles included in this review. Through a descriptive content analysis, we found that: interest research has primarily been conducted in educational domains, while voluntary domains such as sport have received less attention; quantitative methods dominate research; and interest has been inconsistently defined and measured. Future research should focus on consistent interest definitions and employ longitudinal, person-oriented, and qualitative designs in voluntary youth domains such as sport.

Together For Us (T4Us) is a newly developed and evidence-informed social identity intervention for youth sport. Drawing on theoretical underpinnings of soc

Despite the prevalence of injury and positional competition (PC) in sport, the ways in which injury influences athletes’ experiences with PC has yet to be investigated. The purpose of this study was to explore (a) how injury influences athletes’ PC experiences and (b) how injury and PC together influence individual- and team-level outcomes. A two-phase qualitative approach was adopted situated within the Canadian interuniversity football context. In Phase 1, 12 athletes participated in semistructured interviews. The findings from these interviews were then discussed in focus group interviews with eight additional athletes (Phase 2). Data were analyzed through a critical realist lens. Three major themes were identified: (a) competing while injured—a perceived unavoidable reality of PC , (b) player status is a key feature of athletes’ injury and PC experiences , and (c) a double-edged sword—injury creates and takes away playing time opportunities. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Adolescence is a developmental period marked by heightened engagement with questions of identity and belonging, which can create significant challenges for young people’s mental health and social functioning. Sport is a key context in which these identity-related challenges are negotiated, with the potential to foster a meaningful sense of social identity. However, sport environments can also involve social exclusion, bullying, and other adverse group dynamics. As a result, the quality of the social environment, and the strength of the social identity it affords, depends critically on how leaders shape and manage that environment. Guided by the social identity approach to leadership, the present study examined whether identity leadership enacted by coaches and peer leaders supports adolescents’ positive functioning, operationalised as well-being and commitment to their team, by strengthening their identification with the team. Using data from 3,540 athletes aged 12 to 17 across 11 countries, we found that identity leadership from both coaches and peer leaders was positively associated with team identification, which in turn was linked to better mental health and stronger team commitment. These associations were largely consistent across countries, age groups, and genders. Taken together, the findings highlight that adolescent development is fundamentally a process of social identity development and identify identity leadership as a robust lever for supporting healthy adolescent development.

Leadership that helps young people cultivate a shared sense of “us” is likely to be especially important for supporting healthy adolescent development. Yet research in this area has progressed slowly, in part because, until recently, no validated tool existed to assess identity leadership in youth populations. Addressing this gap, Butalia et al. (2024) developed the coach-referent Identity Leadership Inventory for Youth (ILI-Y) and provided initial validation in a UK sample of youth athletes. The present study builds on this work by evaluating the ILI-Y’s validity and reliability across a broader set of culturally diverse countries. Crucially, it also extends the measure by validating a parallel version designed to assess identity leadership among leaders within the team (e.g., captains).We drew on cross-sectional data from 4,095 adolescent athletes aged 12–17 years (M = 14.51, SD = 1.64) across 13 countries. Results supported a four-factor structure consistent with the identity leadership framework, along with strong evidence for internal consistency, measurement invariance, and discriminant, criterion, and incremental validity. These results held for both the coach and captain versions. Together, these findings advance identity leadership research and offer a developmentally appropriate, cross-culturally validated tool for assessing and supporting leadership in youth sport, with potential applications in other youth contexts.

Professional sports teams provide a relevant setting for the study of multicultural work groups. Engaging in additional tasks or voluntary efforts—broadly referred to as organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs)—is key to the effective functioning of such teams. Unfortunately, cultural diversity has been shown to decrease team cohesion and could therefore be detrimental to OCBs. However, intercultural competence (IC) should help team members understand and adapt to the cultural diversity in their teams. Because these aspects remain poorly understood, this study examines the influence of cultural diversity on OCB (i.e., sportspersonship, civic virtue, helping behavior), and the moderating role of IC. A vignette survey study was conducted with 219 professional athletes from different sports (i.e., football, basketball, and volleyball), each exposed to one of three scenarios representing different levels of cultural diversity. Data were analyzed using hierarchical linear modeling. Results suggest an inverted curvilinear relationship between cultural diversity and OCB, with OCBs being significantly lower in the moderate cultural diversity condition compared to the low and high conditions. In addition, the results suggest that athletes’ level of IC acted as a positive moderator between the level of cultural diversity and perceptions of OCB. These findings are discussed in relation to the literature on cultural diversity and (sport) team dynamics.