Tenth International Conference on Sport & Society

Abstract

While in 2008, 85% of Canadians believed that sport participation builds stronger communities (True Sport, 2008), in the last ten years, cheating, commercialization, and violence have become dominant themes in sport. Clearly there is a need for the development of integrity, character, values, and leadership within sport as one avenue to encouraging sport participation and recovering ‘Good Sport’ in Canada. The goal of this research is to generate a leadership development stream for the Long Term Athlete Development model in Canada to in order to enhance the quality, impact, reach and appeal of sport participation more broadly across community. Research questions include: What leadership competencies complete a more holistic model of long term athlete development? (ii) How do these leadership competencies predict and enhance individual and team performance in sport, individual health and well being, team cultural strength, individual satisfaction and success in career and community, and participation in sport? (iii) How are these leadership competencies best learned and taught? (iv) What are the barriers to effective transition / translation of these leadership competencies from sport to career and community? and (v) How might sport participants translate learned leadership competencies into career success and positive social impact? This session reports on exploratory research with athletes, high school programs, Canadian Sport School, national sport organizations.