Key Principles in Providing Meaningful Experience in Youth Sport

Involvement and persisting in sport are often to with many different factors. When it comes to youth sport, significant participant dropout (Balish et al., 2014; Crane & Temple, 2015), lack of personal meaning and relevance (Bergeron et al., 2015; Knight et al., 2018) are noted. One of the ways to help children to stay in sport and practice it as a value part that enriches everyday life and supports their personal development, is providing them experiences that are meaningful and personally significant. Focusing on meaningfulness, it’s important to support coaches working in youth sport, to identify experiences that are meaningful for the children and provide possibilities for greater quality of everyone`s personal experience. In this regard, within the frames of the Erasmus project: Meaningfulness in Youth Sport (MiYS), a set of five principles were identified and suggested to coaches as relevant for providing meaningful experiences in youth sport. The principles are identified as Building an authentic relationship; Developing a culture of belonging; Positive coaching: A balanced approach to competition and being a reflective coach. All five principles are presented in the Coach resource titled “Getting Started with Meaningfulness in Youth Sport (MiYS)”. The presented principles were tested and implemented by youth coaches working in several different sports (parkour, Gaelic football, floorball, volleyball). Coach’s experiences were valuable for determining the final content of the resource and their examples are implemented within the resource. Principles are designed to be used by all coaches who want to improve their practice, regardless of their level of experience