An exploration into young active athletes’ perspectives about their future retirement from sports

Abstract

The majority of research about retirement from sports is based on experiences of retired athletes. There is little research about athletic retirement with young active athletes. The aim of this study is to explore how and\or if young active athletes consider the end of their careers and plan for their eventual retirement from sport. Semi-structured interviews have been done with four student cricketers. The interview data were analysed by using thematic analysis. The results show that the young athletes are aware of retirement and its impacts. Even though they understood the benefit of pre-retirement planning, most of them did not engage with pre-retirement. They thought that it was too early to think about retirement at this stage of career development. However, retirement could happen at any stages of their career development process. It would be beneficial if they could have pre-retirement plans independent of which stage they were in their athletic career development.