Challenge and trauma on the talent development pathway
type: CreativeWork
description: There appears to be general consensus that experiencing a degree of challenge can be the key to successful development in sport (Collins & MacNamara, 2012). Indeed, considerable evidence suggest that negotiating challenging experiences can facilitate growth and development through the process of deploying of psycho-behavioural skills (e.g., Collins et al., 2016b; Howells & Fletcher, 2015). Given that research focusing on the role of challenge is still in its infancy, the aim of this thesis was to provide a vivid insight into the nature of experiences, and subsequent behaviour, of young developing players as they negotiated challenge along the talent pathway. Reflecting the chronological order of progression of players on their talent pathway, Chapter 4 explored the pre-academy experiences of fifteen young team sports players through semi-structured interviews. Results showed that young players arrived at the academy with a fledging set of coping skills. Also, these findings provided a novel insight into the genesis and early development of these skills. More specifically, young players acquired an aptitude from general experiences and upbringing, whereby they had already started to develop and deploy more focused skills to navigate specific challenges, prior to arriving at the academy. Building on these findings, Chapter 5 employed a mixed-methods design to longitudinally track nine young footballers to explore how players continue to develop once in a more structured level of the academy. This chapter attempted to explore the experiences of young players as they negotiated challenge over a 15- month period. Findings demonstrated that players progressed through a series of stages in each challenge, the magnitude and rate of which were highly idiosyncratic. Indeed, the perceived impact, scale, and, ultimately, consequential developmental impact of these challenges appeared to vary greatly with players displaying different responses to similar events. Such inter-indiv…
abstract: There appears to be general consensus that experiencing a degree of challenge can be the key to successful development in sport (Collins & MacNamara, 2012). Indeed, considerable evidence suggest that negotiating challenging experiences can facilitate growth and development through the process of deploying of psycho-behavioural skills (e.g., Collins et al., 2016b; Howells & Fletcher, 2015). Given that research focusing on the role of challenge is still in its infancy, the aim of this thesis was to provide a vivid insight into the nature of experiences, and subsequent behaviour, of young developing players as they negotiated challenge along the talent pathway. Reflecting the chronological order of progression of players on their talent pathway, Chapter 4 explored the pre-academy experiences of fifteen young team sports players through semi-structured interviews. Results showed that young players arrived at the academy with a fledging set of coping skills. Also, these findings provided a novel insight into the genesis and early development of these skills. More specifically, young players acquired an aptitude from general experiences and upbringing, whereby they had already started to develop and deploy more focused skills to navigate specific challenges, prior to arriving at the academy. Building on these findings, Chapter 5 employed a mixed-methods design to longitudinally track nine young footballers to explore how players continue to develop once in a more structured level of the academy. This chapter attempted to explore the experiences of young players as they negotiated challenge over a 15- month period. Findings demonstrated that players progressed through a series of stages in each challenge, the magnitude and rate of which were highly idiosyncratic. Indeed, the perceived impact, scale, and, ultimately, consequential developmental impact of these challenges appeared to vary greatly with players displaying different responses to similar events. Such inter-indiv…
author: Papastaikoudis, Foivos
language: en
date modified: 2026-07-24T03:42:29Z
provider: Oxford Brookes University
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: Oxford Brookes University

PropertyValue
property ID: DOI
value: 10.24384/vp2n-7p03