How Far is Too Far? Understanding Identity and Overconformity in Collegiate Wrestlers

Although athletes who endanger the health and well-being of others are publicly shamed, those who endanger their own health and well-being in an effort to embody the sport ideal are often praised. Athletes are expected to distinguish themselves from their peers, make sacrifices for the good of the game, play through pain and injury, and push physical and mental limits on the path to achieve their goals (Hughes & Coakley, 1991). Collectively, these expectations are known as the sport ethic and while they are considered part of sport culture, athletes who overconform to them may engage in behaviors that risk their health and well-being including disordered eating, chronic overtraining, and substance use. Although some research has investigated overconforming athletes\u27 behaviors, overconformity to the sport ethic remains largely under researched (Coakley, 2015), despite an increasing prevalence of overconforming behaviors in the college athlete population. In an effort to examine athlete identity and deviant overconformity, the current study was designed within a psychocultural life story framework (Peacock & Holland, 1993), using a constructivist-interpretivist paradigm (Ponterotto, 2005). Three collegiate wrestlers were interviewed using a life story interview protocol (adapted from McAdams & Guo, 2014) and a semi-structured interview. Participants also completed the Athlete Identity Measurement Scale (Brewer & Cornelius, 2001), the Social Motivation Orientation in Sport Scale (Allen, 2003), and a brief written expression exercise to provide context for participant narratives. Data were analyzed using provisional (Saldana, 2014) and narrative coding (Smith & Sparkes, 2009b) and represented through the use of a word cloud (McNaught & Lam, 2010) and creative nonfiction (Caulley, 2008; Sparkes & Smith, 2014). Participants described a process of overconformity to the sport ethic that supported and extended previous research (Donnelly & Young, 1988; Hughes & Coakley, 1991). Results indicated that the wrestlers in the current study believed that, because athletes must push boundaries in order to find success, they cannot ever go too far . Moreover, they reported that their athlete identity held significant personal and social meaning to the extent that they willingly engaged in behaviors associated with overconformity in previous literature (e.g., Atkinson, 2011; Johns, 1998; Waldron & Krane, 2005). Recommendations for future research in this line of inquiry include similar studies with other sport populations (e.g., other sports, other competitive levels, other cultural backgrounds) and the development of a measure to identify athletes\u27 degree of deviant overconformity. Practitioners may use this research to better conceptualize the health-compromising behaviors their clients use to obtain athletic success, which may improve treatment planning and outcome goals

Female Adolescent Athletes’ Experiences of Body Dissatisfaction Across Individual and Team Sports

There is an abundance of research explaining the physical and psychological benefits of sport and exercise. Some research suggests sport and exercise may act as a protective factor against body dissatisfaction for adolescent females (Fernández-Bustos et al., 2019; Soulliard et al. 2019). However, it is unclear if adolescent females’ experiences in specific sport settings contribute to perceptions about their bodies. Therefore, this study investigated body perception and its sociocultural influences in adolescent females in team sports versus adolescent females in individual sports. Three focus groups of team sport athletes and two focus groups of individual sport athletes, ages 14-16 years, were conducted. The following four core themes were identified around influences and messaging in sport related to the athletes’ bodies: relationships among teammates and coaches, self-concept, functionality, and social influence. Based on these themes, the findings indicate adolescent female athletes may view sport as a helpful tool to reduce or counteract body dissatisfaction, particularly in team sport athletes. However, sport may not entirely reduce the negative impact from normative and potentially harmful messages surrounding body weight and image, both of which are pervasive in society, the media, and relationships with influential individuals, such as friends, family, and coaches