At a time when “Friday night lights" shone only on white high school football games, African American teams across Texas burned up the gridiron on Wednesday and Thursday nights. The segregated high ...schools in the Prairie View Interscholastic League (the African American counterpart of the University Interscholastic League, which excluded black schools from membership until 1967) created an exciting brand of football that produced hundreds of outstanding players, many of whom became college All-Americans, All-Pros, and Pro Football Hall of Famers, including NFL greats such as “Mean" Joe Green (Temple Dunbar), Otis Taylor (Houston Worthing), Dick “Night Train" Lane (Austin Anderson), Ken Houston (Lufkin Dunbar), and Bubba Smith (Beaumont Charlton-Pollard). Thursday Night Lights tells the inspiring, largely unknown story of African American high school football in Texas. Drawing on interviews, newspaper stories, and memorabilia, Michael Hurd introduces the players, coaches, schools, and towns where African Americans built powerhouse football programs under the PVIL leadership. He covers fifty years (1920–1970) of high school football history, including championship seasons and legendary rivalries such as the annual Turkey Day Classic game between Houston schools Jack Yates and Phillis Wheatley, which drew standing-room-only crowds of up to 40,000, making it the largest prep sports event in postwar America. In telling this story, Hurd explains why the PVIL was necessary, traces its development, and shows how football offered a potent source of pride and ambition in the black community, helping black kids succeed both athletically and educationally in a racist society.
There has been a growing trend of elite athletes being fast-tracked into post-athletic high-performance coaching roles in association football and rugby union in England and Wales. This has been ...facilitated by an increase in bespoke and condensed formal coach education courses that are designed to accelerate current and/or former elite athletes in attaining their coaching accreditation. Hitherto, however, the individual lived experiences of former athletes on this career trajectory during their transition to coaching remains under-investigated. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to analyse how elite male association football and rugby union athletes based in England and Wales (re)created, re-negotiated or transformed their identities when negotiating a fast-tracked career pathway into a post-athletic high-performance coaching role. Fifteen male rugby union (n = 10) and association football (n = 5) athletes were interviewed on two separate occasions over twelve months. Interviews coincided with the start and end dates of the level three coach education course which they were concurrently enrolled on. Interviews focused upon how they (re)created their professional identities upon negotiating the career transition into a post-athletic high-performance coaching role. Data were critically theorised against sociological concepts associated with the theoretical frameworks of Bourdieu, Goffman and Foucault. Results identified how the development of a coaching identity was articulated through the need to define a 'coaching philosophy'. Upholding a coach identity in an 'honest' disposition so athlete to coach respect could be best attained was expressed by all participants and contrasted with Goffman's concepts of front and backstage impression management. Self-reflexive practices of Foucault's askesis were engaged to varying levels to create a coach identity. In three cases this resulted in participants' contestation of their respective club's identity/culture and losing employment as a coach. Finally, recommendations on how coach education structures can further support these coaches in their career transitions are made.
Sport coaching researchers have stressed the need for reflection in practitioners whilst the increased growth and impact of online applications has offered new ways to pursue this important goal. ...Recently, Stoszkowski, Hodgkinson and Collins (
2021
) showed that Flipgrid, an online communication tool that enables short video-based interactions, was a useful tool for facilitating and promoting analytical interaction between student-coaches on a bachelor's degree programme. The present study used realist evaluation to examine this successful use of Flipgrid. A range of methods including surveys, participant observation, content analysis of video transcripts and a semi-structured focus group interview were used to develop preliminary theories regarding how, when and why Flipgrid facilitated and promoted more analytical interaction than earlier studies using online written blogs. Individual realist interviews were then conducted to refine these theories, resulting in three main components: convenience, connection and criticality. This research provides a coherent and plausible explanatory account of the causal processes through which the use of Flipgrid in this specific circumstance produced its outcomes, which may be useful to those implementing reflective practice interventions in similar educational settings.
We explored the impact of coach professional and emotional-healing competency on athlete psychological engagement. We tested our predictions with a sample of 418 athletes. The results showed there ...was an inverted U-shaped relationship between coach professional competency and athletes'
psychological engagement, and a positive relationship between coach emotional-healing competency and athletes' psychological engagement. We also found that coach emotional-healing competency moderated the inverted U-shaped relationship between coach professional competency and athlete psychological
engagement. The findings provide the critical practical implication that coaches should not neglect to foster the competency of emotional healing as they concentrate on the promotion of their professional competency in the process of working with athletes.
The design and delivery of formal coach education and learning opportunities appear to be permeated by taken-for-granted discourses. These discourses exercise a systemised influence on the social ...construction of coaches' professional knowledge, with potentially problematic consequences. Adopting a discursive methodology using discourse analysis, this study explored the ways in which facilitators and coaches in a high-performance coach education programme constructed coach learning. Data were collected over a two-year period using on-course participant observation (10 days), interviews with coaches and course facilitators (n = 29), and document analysis. Findings indicated a dominant discourse of 'learning' as a linear, mechanistic and unproblematic process occurring independently of context, and of coaches as experiential learners, which positioned participants as anti-intellectual and uncritical adopters of 'what works'. These discourses functioned to reproduce relations of power between the facilitators (the holders of knowledge) and the participants (the recipients of knowledge). The impact of these discursive resources on programme design and delivery are discussed, alongside implications for elite coaches' subjectivity and practice, in order to confront dominant and legitimate 'truths' in coach education.
In most previous research on the relationships between coach-autonomy support, the coach-athlete relationship, and team efficacy in team sports, the focus has been on adult players, limiting the ...generalizability of the findings to other age groups. Thus, we investigated
the mediating role of the coach-athlete relationship in the link between coach-autonomy support and team efficacy in a youth team sports context. Participants were 254 Korean youth athletes. Results showed that coach-autonomy support served as a crucial antecedent of the
coach-athlete relationship and team efficacy. Further, the coach-athlete relationship had a significant effect on team efficacy. We also confirmed a partial mediating effect of the coach-athlete relationship in the link between coach-autonomy support and team efficacy
in a youth team sports context. Our findings provide insight into the psychological sources of team efficacy in youth team sports.
The purpose of this research was to analyse a mode of coach education provided by a major disability charity. The course was designed for sports coaches and physical activity professionals and ...focused on coaching people with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). The subsequent analysis drew on data obtained over two years, including participation observation, qualitative survey data and follow-up case study interviews. The research process was scaffolded by a level model approach. Data were analysed in an iterative fashion to generate themes representative of the process of coach learning in relation to discourses about disability, subsequently generating an understanding of the impact of disability coach education on coaches' knowledge. To provide a level of abstraction and critical explanation, we drew on the work of Thomas and engaged with a social relational model of disability to analyse the formation and expression of coaching knowledge in relation to ASD. The analysis highlighted how coach education was an environment for the transmission of ideology about disability, that drew on medical model discourses and constrained coach learning, contributing to a 'false' ideology of inclusion.
The role of skill acquisition specialists within sport systems has become more prominent and imbedded in daily training environments with coaches; however, literature pertaining to their role and ...contributions to effective coach development is very scant. The objective was to extend our understanding of the coaches' perception of the role of, and relationship with, a skill acquisition specialist to identify key factors of effective support that shape coach behavior and ultimately enhance athlete performance. Semi-structured interviews with two National coaches with experience and podium success in multiple Olympic/Paralympic Games, Commonwealth Games, and World Championships was conducted. Three distinct narratives were identified: representing various experiences of the coaches in their sport ('the unplanned journey'), their relationship with the skill acquisition specialist ('more than just a skill expert'), and how this impacted athletes' development ('keys to success'). As part of the relationship development process, aspects of coaches' philosophy were challenged. In addition, the skill acquisition specialists had to display a wide range of skills in the pursuit of shaping coaching behaviors that could further enhance athletes' performance. Required skills included, but were not limited to, bridging the gap between scientific literature and practical application, ensuring knowledge was logical and aligned with the specific needs of the coach and cultural context, demonstrating trust and accountability, displaying personal and social skills and an ability to engage athletes and obtain their approval. Crucially, while overlapping themes occurred, the skill specialists needed to be adaptable to each unique working relationship and this emerged over time.
The purpose of the present study was to use qualitative methods to explore parent and coach perspectives on the influence of parents on the group dynamics within youth interdependent sport teams. ...Specifically, two research questions were addressed: (a) What are the group dynamics constructs perceived as vulnerable to parent influence? and (b) Through what processes might parents be perceived to influence the group dynamics of a sport team? Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 11 parents, 13 coaches, and 7 parent-coaches from across Canada with experiences in seven interdependent sports (e.g., basketball, ringette). Codebook thematic analysis was used to engage with participant responses (King, 2012). Results were divided into three topic summaries: (1) parent influence on youth group dynamics, (2) pathways of parent influence, and (3) strategies to manage parental influence. Findings suggest that a team’s environment, structure, emergent states, and processes are all vulnerable to parent influence in both positive and negative ways. Additionally, 19 parent behaviors were identified by participants as influencing group dynamics and were split into four broad pathways (i.e., public behaviors, through athletes, through coaches, through parents). The third category related to strategies (e.g., coach communication, organization policies) for working with sport parents to promote positive parent involvement, and deter negative parent interference, with youth sport teams. By merging group dynamics and sport parenting research, the present study offers a new perspective to the sport parenting literature and demonstrates the need to examine parent influence in youth sport beyond individual and dyadic concerns.
•Parents are influential for sport team structure and functioning.•Parents use multiple pathways to influence group dynamics.•Coaches are key to facilitiating positive parent involvement in group dynamics.•Education and policies are not completely efficacious in changing parent behaviour.•Group dynamics-based interventions may deter parental interference in youth sport.
PDF
