What Happened? Co-Regulation and Personal Growth in Youth Sport

Abstract

Youth athletes in team sports are embedded within a complex co-regulatory system. Their club implements expectations and regulations upon the players, their coaches work with the club to define the sociocultural system, and coaches work with teams and players to implement the activities, like practice time and game strategy. These provide opportunities for struggle and negotiation within and among teams, players, and coaches. As teams struggle together and reflect upon shared experiences, tensions emerge that begin to define their identity. This study aims to explore the role of reflection in emergent identity across shared history through the McCaslin (2009) co-regulation framework and causal attribution theory (Weiner, 2010). Results indicate that identified tensions play a key role in how players causally consider and attribute successful or unsuccessful events as they happen to themselves or their team. These tensions create a platform for shared experiences that inform future motivation and emergent identity through individual and team learnings.