Readiness For Competition

Front 1

3 Types of Readiness

(Passer & Wilson, 2002)

Back 1

- Motivational Readiness

- Cognitive Readiness

- Physical readiness
(motor skills, functional capacity, demands of sport)

Front 2

Motivational Readiness

Back 2

- actively seeking opportunities to engage in social comparison

- wishes to evaluate their ability relative to peers

- benefits more from competition than unstructured play

Front 3

Development of Self-evaluation
(Passer & Wilson, 2002)

Back 3

- self-referenced (0-2.5 years)

- compete for opportunity (2.5-4 years)

- social comparison (4-6 years)

- active competition (6-9 years)

Pascuzzi (1981) and Butler (1996) studied when children seek out competition

Donzella et al. (2000) - when 3-5 year olds lose, many negatives seen: ^HR, anger, tension

Front 4

Cognitive Readiness

Back 4

- informational processing abilities

<4 years have short attention spans, more sophisticated 10-12 years

- attributional abilities

4-7 years attribute outcomes to task difficulty not ability/effort, more able to cope with failure 9-12 years

- role-perspective

<6 years ego-centric with true group perspective at 10-12 years
(Coakley, 1996)

Front 5

Parental Readiness

Back 5

- respect child's right to compete or not

- allow child to sample sports

- avoid reverse dependency trap

- share the child with the coach

- avoid being over protective

- accept child's disappointments

Front 6

Physical Readiness

Back 6

Fundamental motor skills not fully mature until 8-9 years and variability in physical and motor development is large.

low physical competence can lead to:

- less success/playing time/enjoyment

- given minor roles and less attention

- greater anxiety and self handicapping

- minimum effort/sabotage activity

- injury/more likely to drop out

Front 7

Early Specialisation
(Cote et al., 2007)

Back 7

- early involvement in sport, limiting participation to 1 sport all year round

- emphasis on deliberate practice over play, athletic excellence is objective

For (Ericsson et al.,1993; Law et al.,2007) Against (Ronbeck et al., 2004)

- opportunity to excel - physical injury

- college scholarships - loss of childhood

- fringe benefits - over dependence

- social isolation