The purpose of this study was to investigate the meeting that take place in professional coaching in a coach-athlete relationship, all facets related to the process leading up to a successfully coach-athlete relationship (Jowett, 2008), communication in the relationship, type of leadership, and factors related to their satisfaction with performance and instruction of their coach-athlete relationship. Method Due to the two different types of sports that exist, individual and team sports, two different coach-athlete relationships were included in this study, but only results from the team dyad will be presented in this paper. The team sport coach and athlete are performing at top national level in football, and the dyad is respectively the head coach and the captain of the team. They share a history of three years together. The coach is 42 years of age, coaching experience from top national level for eight years with national cup trophy in 2000. The athlete is 35 years of age and has been playing at top national and international level for more than fifteen years. In-depth interviews were conducted and arranged to take place individually. An interview guide was used for gathering data and an Ipod recorder was used during the interview. Both interviews lasted for approximately 1 hours and 10 minutes. The analyses of the data obtained followed a phenomenological procedure (Aanstoos, 1983) trying to grasp and identifying meaning units, specifying central themes, and then articulating their psychological sense or meaning in order to examine the nature of the meeting in a successfully coach-athlete relationship. Results Results from interviews with both the coach and the athlete in the team sport coach-athlete relationship indicated that factors such as social support, commitment, humor, use of time, attention, and carefulness are all important facets for the dimension building a successfully relationship. In the dimension communication vital facets appear to be thoroughly, the frequency, the consistency between verbal and non verbal communication, and the art of the informal communication during everyday practice. For the dimensions leadership and performance and instruction it seems to be respectively consistency for the coaching process, and focus on the impact of intrinsic motivation (Jowett, 2008) and evaluation of own development as most important. Discussion In general both the coach and the athlete underlined the significance of consistency and commitment for a successfully relationship in order to perform in sport. The study also revealed that communication and democratic leadership is vital factors for the meeting in the relationship for both the coach and athlete to grow and develop which is in line with former research.
© Copyright 2009 14th annual Congress of the European College of Sport Science, Oslo/Norway, June 24-27, 2009, Book of Abstracts. Veröffentlicht von The Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.