Reliance On Coaches Not Good for Athletes

According to current research from Binghamton University, athletes do not benefit from relying on a coach through the course of a season, which could be a sign that are not progressing in their development.

According to a quote from a BU press release, Chou-Yu Tsai, assistant professor of management in Binghamton University’s School of Management says “Being increasingly needed by your athletes as time goes on is not a good sign,”

Tsai said “If your athletes no longer need your leadership and guidance as time goes on, that should be seen as a positive sign that you’ve helped them in their development.”

Tsai along with fellow colleagues, San-Fu Kao of National Tsing Hua University, and Robert Schinke of Laurentian University, the team .studied the number of contexts that included athletics, and set out to see how a coaches leadership affected the evaluation of athletes over time.

The team conducted research on 250 Division One collegiate basketball players, and studied how they felt about their coaches, through different periods of the season.

The team found that the benefits from relying on their coaches did not last for very long.

“If you’re not gaining some sort of independence from your coach, you may feel like you need that coach even more,” said Tsai. “This probably isn’t a good sign.”

The study is called , “Investigation of the interaction between coach transformational leadership and coaching competency change over time,” and it is available in the International Journal of Sports Science & Coaching.