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COPYRIGHT 2007 University of South Alabama
International adolescent sport has the potential to be an extremely stressful experience and these athletes have reported a variety of stressors including concerns about errors, outcome, opponents, and the weather (Nicholls, 2005a; Nicholls, Holt, & Polman, 2005; Nicholls, Holt, Polman, & James, 2005). The failure to cope with stress can result in a variety of negative consequences such as decreased performance (Lazarus, 2000), injury (Smith, Ptacek, & Smell, 1992), decreased satisfaction (Scanian & Lewthwaite, 1984), and sport withdrawal (Kolt, Kirby, & Lindner, 1995). It is widely accepted among sport psychology researchers that athletes must learn to cope with stressors to reduce these undesirable consequences. Of particular relevance to the current sample, who were aiming for professional contracts, is the notion that adolescent athletes must learn to cope with the stressors they experience to pursue a career in professional sport (Holt and Dunn, 2004a).
Coping has been defined as "constantly changing cognitive and behavioral efforts to manage specific external and/or internal demands that are appraised as taxing or exceeding the resources of the person" (Lazarus & Folkman, 1984, p. 141). Lazarus (1999) categorized coping strategies into two broad 'higher-order' functions; problem- and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping describes strategies directed at managing the environment (e.g., problem solving, goal setting, and increasing efforts). Emotion-focused coping involves managing emotional responses to stress (e.g., relaxation, acceptance, and wishful thinking).
A third coping function, avoidance describes both behavioral (e.g., removing self from the situation) and psychological (e.g., cognitive distancing) attempts to disengage from a stressful situation (Anshel, 1996; Krohne, 1993). Categorizing coping into these three dimensional classifications of coping functions for youth sport athletes has been supported by Kowalski and Crocker (2001).
Relatively little is known about the nature of coping during adolescence (Compas, Connor-Smith, Saltzman, Harding Thomsen, & Wadsworth, 2001) and only a few studies have examined the coping attempts of adolescent athletes (Kowalski & Crocker, 2001). The majority of sport coping research has focused on adult athletes (Nicholls & Polman, 2007). This is somewhat surprising as adolescence is thought to be a particularly important period implicated in the acquisition of a coping repertoire (Seiffe-Krenke, 1995). Adolescence is also considered the time when athletes can become experts in their chosen sport, and when sport can start to dominate their lives (Bloom, 1985; Cote & Hay, 2002).
The studies that have examined the coping responses of adolescent athletes have provided some insight into the coping experiences of this population. However, these studies are limited in their generalizability because they have been exclusively conducted on athletes performing in individual sporting activities. Crocker and Isaak (1997), with a sample of adolescent swimmers, found that coping in practice was consistent, but in competition the coping responses varied. Gaudreau, Lapierre, and Blondin (2001) examined pro-competitive, during competition, and post-competitive coping responses among adolescent golfers. Their findings suggested that the golfers' coping responses changed across all three phases of competition. In a follow up study, Gaudreau, Blondin, and Lapierre (2002) found that golfers who did not achieve their performance goal for the round decreased task-orientated coping (e.g., strategies that are used to change or master aspects of a situation), emotion, and avoidance coping from pro- to post-competition. These three studies found active coping, increased effort, and positive reappraisal to be the most commonly used coping strategies.
More recently, Nicholls, Holt, and Polman (2005) examined stressors, effective, and ineffective coping experiences among a sample of international Irish adolescent golfers. Results revealed that the main stressors were outcome, mistakes, score, evaluation, and opponents. Strategies associated with effective coping experiences were rationalizing, re-appraising, blocking, positive self-talk, following a routine, breathing exercises, physical relaxation, and seeking on-course social support. Alternatively, different types of coping responses such as trying too hard, speeding up, routine changes, and a lack of coping were associated with ineffective coping experiences. A limitation of the Nicholls, Holt, and Polman (2005) paper, and other studies on stress and coping in sport, was that the data were collected retrospectively (Crocker, Kowalski, & Graham, 1998; Nicholls & Polman, 2007). With the passage of time people make errors in recalling stress and coping experiences (e.g., Smith, Leffingwell, & Ptacek, 1999).
To address these limitations Nicholls, Holt, Polman, and James (2005) examined the stressors and coping strategies utilized by a sample of Welsh international adolescent golfers during a 31-day diary study. The four most-frequently reported stressors in this study were making a physical error, making a mental error, observing an opponent play well, and difficult weather conditions. Strategies that were classified as serving a problem-focused coping function were cited more frequently than those serving emotion-focused or avoidance coping functions. The highest frequency of coping strategies coincided with the days when the most stressors were reported. A limitation of the Nicholls, Holt, Polman, and James paper is that it failed to address coping effectiveness. Folkman and Moskowitz (2004) suggested that the underlying motivation for studying coping is belief that some forms of coping will be more effective than others, and that this information would help guide coping interventions to teach people to cope with stress more efficiently.
A weakness of the coping research to date is that little is known about the notion of coping effectiveness in a sport setting (Crocker et al., 1998; Nicholls, Holt, & Polman, 2005; Nicholls & Polman, 2007; Ntoumanis & Biddle, 1998). Somerfield and McCrae (2000) suggested that this is one of the most difficult issues facing coping...
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