The Binding Force: A Practical Model for Building and Maintaining the Coach-Athlete Relationship in Canadian Intercollegiate Team Sport

The Binding Force: A Practical Model for Building and Maintaining the Coach-Athlete Relationship in Canadian Intercollegiate Team Sport Coaches at Canadian post-secondary institutions have immense responsibilities: operating a successful sport program, managing the academic and athletic success of their athletes and ultimately delivering results, in other words, winning. “When athletes rst join a team, they begin to familiarize themselves with their coach, the coach-athlete relationship, the environment, and the system” (Becker, 2009 p. 97) the athlete will compete in. Successful coaches are consistent in who they are (coach attributes), and how they maintain relationships, manage the team environment, and carry out their system (Becker, 2009); they provide a stable environment in order to develop the overall person and student-athlete. To date, the coach-athlete relationship remains to be an area of further exploration within team sport. The coach–athlete relationship is currently de ned as a situation shaped by coaches’ and athletes’ interconnected feelings, thoughts, and behaviors (Jowett, 2005, 2007; Jowett & Poczardowski, 2007). This study addresses the need for a more systematic qualitative understanding of the coach-athlete relationship through the eyes of champion post-secondary team sport coaches. The emergence of various themes within the relationship are discussed, demonstrating a reciprocal bond that leads to, and continually feeds the connection between the coach and athlete, even afterwards, once it has been established. The importance of the coach-athlete relationship, its impact, the development, and maintenance are discussed.


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Introduction: Introduction: The Binding Force: A Practical Model for Building and Maintaining the

Coach-Athlete Relationship in Canadian Intercollegiate Team Sport
Coaches at Canadian post-secondary institutions have immense responsibilities: operating a successful sport program, managing the academic and athletic success of their athletes and ultimately delivering results, in other words, winning. "When athletes rst join a team, they begin to familiarize themselves with their coach, the coach-athlete relationship, the environment, and the system" (Becker, 2009 p. 97) the athlete will compete in. Successful coaches are consistent in who they are (coach attributes), and how they maintain relationships, manage the team environment, and carry out their system (Becker, 2009); they provide a stable environment in order to develop the overall person and student-athlete. To date, the coach-athlete relationship remains to be an area of further exploration within team sport. The coach-athlete relationship is currently de ned as a situation shaped by coaches' and athletes' interconnected feelings, thoughts, and behaviors (Jowett, 2005(Jowett, , 2007Jowett & Poczardowski, 2007). This study addresses the need for a more systematic qualitative understanding of the coach-athlete relationship through the eyes of champion post-secondary team sport coaches. The emergence of various themes within the relationship are discussed, demonstrating a reciprocal bond that leads to, and continually feeds the connection between the coach and athlete, even afterwards, once it has been established. The importance of the coach-athlete relationship, its impact, the development, and maintenance are discussed.
Building a program of excellence and maintaining a level of superior results year after year is a major challenge coaches face. Understanding what makes a coach successful on a consistent basis is fascinating to researchers in various domains outside of sport, such as: peer coaching (Showers, 1985), classroom management coaching (Sprick, Knight, Reinke, & McKale, 2006), content focused coaching (Staub, West, & Bickel, 2003), blended coaching (Bloom, Castagna, Moir, & Warren, 2005), organizational coaching, and executive coaching (Peltier, 2001). There are a multitude of factors that need to occur both through the season and over the course of multiple seasons for long-term program success. According to Vallee and Bloom (2005), there are four 'higher-order' categories that determine how university coaches of team sports can build successful programs. They were outlined as follows: Coaches' Attributes, Individual Growth, Organizational Skills, and Vision. Within this arrangement, Vallee and Bloom (2005) outlined the grouping titled, coaches' attributes, and stated that they "encompassed coaches' traits, personalities, characteristics, and knowledge" (p. 190). Vallee and Bloom stated, "current results suggested that success may be partly attributed to the relationships these coaches formed with their athletes" (2005, p. 187). The past decade has seen growing interest in theoretical approaches that examine the coach athlete relationship (Lafrenière, Jowett, Vallerand, & Carbonneau, 2011).
It is clear that the coach-athlete relationship is central to effective coaching (Jowett, 2009;Lyle, 2002); history of the coach-athlete dyad re ects success as a partnership wherein the coach and athlete when working productively together, escalates the levels of achievement (Jowett, 2009). Jowett and Ntoumanis (2004) conceptualized the coach-athlete relationship and partnership as the situation in which coach and athletes "emotions, thoughts, and behaviors are mutually and causally interconnected" (p. 245). Advancement in this area is still growing and the vast majority of empirical studies surrounding the Coach-athlete relationship have been published within the last decade. Among the contemporary discoveries, Jowett and colleagues (2000,2003,2004,2005,2009,2010, and 2011) have been among the leaders in advancing our understanding of the coach athlete relationship. Jowett and colleagues have provided comprehensive empirical evidence linking the concept of the coach-athlete relationship and the elements of which it is comprised, to its developed tools (i.e. CART-Questionnaire). This framework outlines that the quality of the relationship as a Highcharts.com situational occurrence in which coaches' and athletes' affective closeness (feelings), commitment (thoughts), and complementarity (behaviors), are interconnected (co-orientation) (Yang & Jowett, 2012). This de nition led to the development of a conceptual model known as the 3 + 1Cs model (Jowett, 2007). Closeness describes the affective ties of the relationship members and represents such interpersonal feelings as trust, respect and liking one another. Commitment re ects the cognitive element of the relationship and de nes coaches' and athletes' desire to continue the relationship in the future. Building a solid relationship can assist in increasing an athlete's overall performance. Olympiou, Jowett, and Duda (2008) suggest, "the interpersonal dynamics between the coach and the athlete are central to the coaching process" (p. 423). A coach can increase an athlete's level of con dence by simply having the coach understand them and that they feel a sense of comfort and trust within the corresponding relationship (Kidman, 2006). Research by Werthner (2009) investigated identifying factors that contributed to successful or unsuccessful performances from the coach and athlete's perspectives. For example, what caused a personal best or had a strong in uence behind an athlete's medaling performance. Five key themes were discovered and outlined in the Canadian Journal for Women in Coaching Online: the development, of a (1) high degree of athlete self-awareness; the (2) importance of a strong coachathlete relationship; the (3) creation of an optimal training environment; the (4) creation of a strong support system, from both nancial and human resource perspectives; and (5) excellent management of the Olympic environment (Werthner, 2009, p. 1). It was suggested that the second theme, the importance of a strong coach-athlete relationship, clearly emerged as a central factor in winning an Olympic medal or producing a personal best at the 2008 Olympic Games. Each of the 27 athletes interviewed spoke at length about her or his coach and how they worked together to create an environment that enabled them to succeed. This is in line with empirical evidence suggesting that performance success is positively in uenced by coach-athlete partnerships that are stable and harmonious (Jowett & Cockerill, 2003), rather than unstable and conflicting (Jowett, 2003).
The coach-athlete relationship is strongly supported via quantitative research. For example, Jowett and colleagues have provided statistical evidence with the development of the Coach-Athlete Relationship Questionnaire (CART-Q;Jowett, 2009;Jowett & Ntoumanis, 2004;Jowett, Poczwardowski, & Lavallee, 2007). Speci cally three psychological constructs that represent feelings, thoughts and behaviors as the content of coach-athlete relationships, de ned by closeness, commitment, and complementarity (3Cs; Jowett, 2007). The next step is to broaden our understanding of the coach-athlete relationship through an in-depth systematic qualitative approach in order to show how meaning is constructed and how coaches and athletes make sense of their association and their athletic environments (Merriam, 2014). The purpose of this present study is to continue to address the gaps within the coachathlete literature by qualitatively examining elite post-secondary team coach perspectives and thoughts regarding the relationship; the contributing coaches are representative of the Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) system. It's important that we continually investigate how a relationship perspective can affect a coach's ability to impact his or her athlete, and to what extent, the performance of his/her athletes. After all, we are proposing that the dyadic relationship between coach and athlete is considered to be at the heart of athlete development (Lyle, 1999).
"The Coach-Athlete Relationship is recognized as the foundation of coaching and a major force in promoting the athlete's physical and psychosocial skills" Jowett (2005, p. 412). Mageau and Vallerand (2003) suggest a strong interpersonal coach-athlete relationship contains positive growth and enhances motivation to perform well. This is aligned with athlete's views of the motivational features of the coach-created environment in which they train and compete; therefore, suggesting those athletes' perceptions of the coachathlete relationship has motivational signi cance (Olympiou, Jowett, & Duda 2008). According to Jowett (2009) "studying the nature and content of the coach-athlete relationship as well as its functions would help discern what makes a coach-athlete relationship positive and successful" (p. 35). She stated, "the generated knowledge will help design strategies for the development of effective, supportive, and successful athletic relationships" (Jowett, 2009, p. 35).
"The coach-athlete relationship has been found to relate in theoretically meaningful ways, to such constructs as; personal and interpersonal satisfaction, social cohesion, and motivational climate" (Jowett, 2009, p. 48). Therefore, this study in coach-athlete relationship research focusses on personal views of elite head coaches within team sports. Complementing previous, and expanding current empirical evidence surrounding the coach-athlete relationship; through a qualitative, phenomenological approach. Adding to such frameworks as Wylleman's (2000) model of acceptance-rejection, dominance-submission, and socio-emotional factors; Mageau and Vallerand's (2003) motivational model of the coach-athlete relationship; and the 3+1C's conceptual model of the coach-athlete relationship (Jowett, 2009;Jowett & Ntoumanis, 2004;Olympiou et al., 2008). This study's methodological approach describes and explores phenomena, generating explanations by means of interviews of participants (head coaches), and their lived experiences (Giorgi, 1997).