Ira will be presenting a paper entitled  “Sources of Stress in 450 Youth Sport Coaches: Implications for Coach Education.”  Location and time to come.

For more  information on this conference please visit their website.

This week we had another engaging discussion about developing a mindset that enables a confident and consistent approach toward finishing a season and being ready for playoff hockey.  Over the past few months, we have discussed such topics as: leadership, goal setting, managing a winning mindset, and team work.

The Woburn High School Women’s Ice Hockey team led by Coach McCurtain, has consistently been a strong team in Massachusetts Division One Hockey, and I wish them success in their regular and postseason journey.

If you would like to learn more about the power of mental skills training and the sport world, please contact us today!

http://www.goodrichresidential.com

We had a lively discussion about preparing and developing a mindset that enables a confident and consistent approach toward Making The Sale in the ever difficult and complex real estate market.

If you would like to learn more about the power of mental skills training and the sales world, please contact us today!

Values, Joys, and Sources of Unhappiness of 500 High School Coaches

John McCarthy, Amy Baltzell, Vanessa LoVerme Aktar, Dave Hurley, Ira Martin

The purpose of this symposium is to present results from a mixed methods study which focused on understanding the values, job satisfaction, and happiness of public high school sport coaches (n=500).  Data was gathered via an open-ended anonymous on-line survey.  We will consider the alignment between (a) coaches’ values and sources of coaching unhappiness and joy, and (b) their perceptions of what is valued by their schools and their athletes’ parents.

Why study the subjective experiences of high school coaches? Firstly, the coach is a central figure in the quality of the athlete’s experience. U.S. participation in high school sport has been steadily increasing, from 4 million in 1971-1972 to over 7.5 million student-athletes in 2009-2010, and so has the number of coaches.  Secondly, prior coaching research has focused on the sources of stress of collegiate and elite coaches, such as high expectations and pressure to win (Frey, 2007; Martin, Dale & Jackson, 2001; McCallister, Blinde & Weiss, 2000), time commitment and personal sacrifices (Olusoga, Butt, Maynard & Hays, 2010), and lack of resources and support (Frey, 2007; Kelley & Gill, 1993; Kilty, 2006). Thirdly, while there has been research on understanding how coaches foster the development of life skills (Gould, Collins, Lauer & Chung, 2006; Gould, Collins, Lauer & Chung, 2007; McCallister, Blinde & Weiss, 2000) scant research exists in the area of the psychological and emotional well-being of the high school coach. More work is needed to understand the intersection of what coaches value, what is valued in their context, and what they find challenging and rewarding about coaching.

Our results are of interest to sport psychology consultants, administrators and coach educators who provide both support and professional development opportunities to coaches. The predictors of coaching job satisfaction and happiness will be presented in the supporting symposium lectures.