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Children learn from several types of people, experiences, and situations. Most children, including myself, learned many early life lessons from organized sports. Sports have the ability to play an enormous role in our lives and affect us in a multitude of ways. Our life lessons may be experienced by coaches, peers, parents, or even from situations during competition. Organized sports and the people involved made me who I am today. Several theories and social agents have shaped my personal experiences and development through youth sports.
I have even chosen a career path of coaching basketball because of my socialization and experiences through sport in youth.
I started playing organized sports when I was around 7 years old and in the second grade. The sports that I started playing were soccer and coach pitch baseball. My stepfather and older sister seemed to be the ones to get me involved with sports. They wanted me to enjoy activities with my peers and give me a positive outlet to experience activities outside the home.
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That was vaguely the beginning of an extended time throughout my childhood of playing many organized sports with several experiences allowing me to grow. While growing up I played organized youth sports of basketball, soccer, football, baseball, & track & field. Although some more than others, each of these sports played an important role in my development throughout life.
The coaches I had along the way displayed many different emotions, motivational tips, & leadership traits. These traits tie in to the Self-Determination Theory and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Theory.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy Theory can be best described as any positive or negative expectation that may affect someone’s behavior toward them in a way that causes those expectations to be fulfilled. If a leader or coach expects players to play hard, compete, and play with respect, he will likely treat them in a way that elicits the response he or she expects. In my life, I can reference this to when my football coach in 7th and 8th grade would never use profanity, always seemed to show humility during games and practices, and pushed us to compete with each other which I think carried over for years to come. The way that he pushed us in such a positive manner gave us the competence to push through any difficult situation with a humble approach.
Coaches play a huge role in athletes’ lives as role models, motivators, and someone who empowers/inspires them with their work ethic and focus. Self-Determination Theory was very important to my development because it deals with extrinsic and intrinsic motivation. The Self-Determination Theory focuses on three main aspects: competence, relatedness, and autonomy. If the aspects are met, this will improve the growth and development of our youth. Competence is defined as the desire to control the outcome and experience mastery. Relatedness is defined as the want to interact and experience caring for others. Finally, autonomy is defined as freedom from outside control and in harmony with one’s integrated self. We us the framework of Self-Determination Theory to understand the quality of relationships within sports.
One study was conducted by Raabe & Zakrajsek to find differences between athletes’ perceptions of their coaches’ and teammates’ influence on their basic psychological need satisfaction. It was found that peers had a significantly more positive influence on individuals’ perceptions of competence, autonomy, and relatedness. Yet, the need fulfillment from coaches predicted athletes’ perceptions of and satisfaction with performance. This translates to my athletic experiences in sport while growing up. Although my peers and teammates challenged me to compete and improve, it was my coaches who established, supported and influenced my feelings of success. Based on the information given from Self-Fulfilling Prophecy and Self-Determination theories, I felt they related to my development in organized sports as a child greatly.
The coach that influenced my life the most was Coach Steve Medford. Coach Medford was an assistant basketball coach at my high school for my first three years. Coach Medford was such an important factor to my growth, I don’t know how much he may even understand. This was because of the style of Transformational Leadership. Transformational Leadership Style is a coaching behavior associated with inspirational motivation, idealized influence, intellectual stimulation, and individualized consideration. This is based on the device of the 4 I’s: Inspirational Motivation sets high achievement standards and exhibits confidence in attaining them. Idealized Influence models’ desirable attitudes and behaviors. Intellectual Stimulation facilitates problem solving and creativity among teammates. Lastly, Individualized Consideration recognizes the needs and interests of each team member. Coach Medford showed all aspects of the 4 I’s.
He was a positive influence on a team of players from several different backgrounds. Coach Medford fostered an environment of growth and learning life skills such as problem-solving/critical thinking, effective communication, and accountability. He recognized certain some of my specific needs and interests showing that he genuinely cared. Our expectations as a team were very high. We had a high demand that we were to perform, but he believed that our team could be successful, and we had the ability to do so. These are all skills that I needed in my future through high school and an undergraduate degree, that are still used in daily life.
Prior to Coach Medford, my coach had a leadership style that was far from Coach Medford. He actually made me consider quitting basketball altogether around the age of 13. Coach Bennett was always negative, and I didn’t feel as if our team was learning or improving. Several of my teammates lost a lot of passion to play. In a study by Smith, Small, & Barnett, baseball coaches received a preseason training intervention where behavioral guidelines were presented to help reduce athletes’ anxiety. Players that were coached by trained coaches evaluated their coaches more positively. Players also reported having more fun, and their teams exhibited a higher level of attraction among players. (Smith, Smoll & Barnett, 1995). Coach Bennett was not a trained coach and was placed into his role from being a normal math teacher.
On the contrary, under the developmental model of sports participation (DMSP), Coach Medford was in line with being the supportive and encouraging coach that I needed in my life. We had the reciprocal coach-athlete respect that is typically found in the specialization phase of DMSP. Additionally, Fraser-Thomas, Côté, & Deakin’s study found that dropout swimmers had limited one-on-one coaching. As a former basketball player, I also found this to be true. Several of my friends dropped out of sports based on limited one-on-one attention from their coaches. I did not stop playing sports. However, I did contemplate dropping out based on negative coach behavior from untrained coaches as well as little attention to athlete improvement. In terms of the situation with Coach Bennett, I learned how to not approach athletes and how not to coach. This helped guide me to be supportive to athletes and focus on improvement rather than just the outcome of the game. Although as a coach, I do challenge my players, I have adapted my behavior based on my experiences with my coaches more than any other factor.
Organized sports have played a huge role throughout my life. I have had many experiences. The shared experiences have had a tremendous impact on my life and display different theories such as Self-Fulfilling Prophecy theory and Self-Determination theory that allowed me to develop into who I am now. It seems it is absolutely necessary for youth development to be impacted by organized sports. Without transformational leaders in my life, I would not be able to effectively reach and connect to all the people that I have built relationships within my career. I am thankful for the peers, and especially coaches that made an impact on my life whether I necessarily agreed with them or not.
Looking back now, with goals of a higher level of education and continuing my coaching profession, I still hold value to the things Coach Medford taught me. Due to his influence, I found that I also had a passion and want to be a transformational leader through coaching basketball. I have been blessed to do so, as a high school head coach, as a collegiate assistant, and as a collegiate head coach at the smaller college level. Now currently as the Graduate Assistant Coach of Men’s Basketball at Texas State, I am continuing this path. If I can be a positive and transformational leader to all those players I have, current and former, I feel they will have a better chance of being successful whatever they may choose in life.
Socialization Through Sports. (2021, Dec 04). Retrieved from https://studymoose.com/socialization-through-sports-essay
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