Understanding the causes of dropout amoung (sic) elite junior and youth sailors when reaching adult level

Abstract

The RYA (2010) boasts being the top Olympic sailing nation in the past 2 games and leads the way in performance and training. However it is often a struggle to achieve the depth within the elite squads with British sailors often training with competitors from other nations in order to have the correct standard of training partner. This also came to view in the 2010 Laser world championships held in Hayling Island in Hampshire, where team GB only achieved two sailors in the top thirty. However this is not the case within junior classes where GB has many more athletes achieving top results internationally, as well as nationals attendance figures being higher at junior and youth level than at adult (Yachts and Yachting 2010). This study looked at why performance youth and junior athletes dropped out when reaching adult level, interviewing seven ex sailors. Inductive and deductive analyses were used involving each interview transcript to be analysed separately, then key themes were identified within each interview which would allow any new themes to emerge from the interviews. Once this information was coded according to theme a thematic analysis was used, information was tabulated and compared to each other in order to find any relations in experiences between the participants across the themes. From these interviews certain key themes emerged to understanding why they had dropped out from the sport, these themes included; goal setting and expectations play verse practice, sampling verse specialising, transitions and unsatisfactory social life. Most of these issues were raised within the review of literature and supported by other relevant studies as potential areas to cause dropout, however from the majority of the subjects within this study both unsatisfactory social life and management of goals or expectations were the major causes of eventual disengagement form the sport.