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• Dual Career through the Analysis of Policy Documents: A Case Study Focusing on Athletics

  86-96

  David Olah

  Petra Nyisztor

  Szilvia Borbely

  Jozsef Bognar

  Views:

  254

  Careers can be influenced by several factor groups: opportunities provided by (1) the environment, (2) ambition, and (3) personal aptitude (Juhász & Matiscsákné Lizák, 2014). In the case of a dual career in sports, an athlete’s career is not limited to sports only, but also can include education. It is worthwhile for sportsmen to learn alongside their athletic career. For, a sporting career can come to an end at any time due to any unexpected event (Baráth et al., 2014). This dual career’s success depends heavily on the people in the athlete’s immediate environment. In our research, we used a qualitative method to conduct a content analysis of policy documents and semi-structured interviews with Olympians of three countries, one from Slovenia, one from Germany, and one from Hungary. We divided up our investigation into questions related to funding, professional background and studies. Their opinions showed that all three athletes are satisfied with the support they receive for their current dual careers, with only the Slovenian athlete feeling a slight deficiency. They have successfully combined their studies and sport, and all three have attended or are currently attending higher education. It can be concluded that all sport policy efforts show the potential for dual career assistance with a focus on self-efficacy. No differences can be found in the expectations of these elite athletes, and all feel the need to continue their studies in addition to sporting, regardless of whether or not it coincides with their previous studies. As regards the need to continue studying, the Slovenian athlete felt the least need. This degree of “need” does not affect the performance of the athletes in their respective sports, as all of them love sports. All receive adequate funding as well. In all three countries studied, we found such a level of support for the athlete that ought to be held up as ‘good practice’. The German competitor in particular possesses such professional staff that we would highlight and recommend it as good practice to follow.

• Assessing the Role of the Coach in Terms of Dropping out from Youth Sports

  66-74

  Zsolt Szakál

  Views:

  303

  Much of international research deals with the subject, so we can say that probably one of the most important issues in the field of youth education today is to explore the causes of early drop-out from organised sport. The aim of this essay was to test our self developed measurement tool and gain insight into what coaches see as causes of dropping out within their own sport and what percentage of this phenomenon is experienced in their field. The main question for us is, why junior athletes between the age of 13–16 are dropping out of competitive sports, what role the coach’s personality has (in this), and what other reasons might the phenomenon have. In our enquiry, we sought to find out the opinion of coaches of team sports such as handball, football or icehockey, in addition to individual sports, like athletics and karate. In the research, we used only certain parts of the interviews during the analysis, paying special attention to the coaching attitude, the coach-athlete relationship, and the ways of motivation and methods used by the coach. The results confirmed that the causes of dropout should be sought for in the dimensions which we set up earlier. In the respect of the exploratory nature of the study, we cannot draw far-reaching conclusions, but we certainly consider it as a good starting point for our further research.