The Preliminary National Sport Report

Kristen Dieffenbach, Christina Villalon, and Jaxon Lamb*

Center for Applied Coaching and Sport Sciences, West Virginia University,Morgantown, WV 26505

Presentation Category: Human Engagement (Poster Presentation #135)

Student’s Major: Sport and Exercise Psychology

Currently, there are no central reports or databases that outline which sports organizations are operating in the country. The lack of insight creates an issue when stakeholders try to reform the current systems in place. This preliminary report is for coaches, administrators, national governing bodies (NGBs), and other parties of interest, to see what the sports landscape looks like. Using an applied quantitative research style, the organizations were researched, in order to see what is being offered by each one of them. The criteria examined was which sport the organization offered, what type of areas they serve, what the participants' ages are, and other critical pieces of information to sort each organization. The report allowed us to identify around 75,000 programs that have been affiliated with either a specific NGB or an acknowledged association. The overall goal of this project is to create an annual report that can be reviewed by all stakeholders to see what type of sports programs are being offered and participated in across the nation. The second goal is that once we have an accurate assessment of what organizations are active in the United States, we will be able to begin looking at who is coaching these participants and what coaching education opportunities they are engaging in. The West Virginia University Center for Applied Coaching and Sport Sciences plans to use this report to analyze the coaching education field, so that recommendations and improvements can be made and implemented to better the coaching arena, nationally.

Funding:

Program/mechanism supporting research/creative efforts: WVU's Research Apprenticeship Program (RAP) & accompanying HONR 297-level course