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- Title
High School Cross-Country Coaches' Perception of Junior High School Athletes Competing at the Varsity Level.
- Authors
Picucci, Steven; Chen, Steve
- Abstract
Early specialization and excessive high intensity training are two comment trends observed in today's youth sports. The results are an increase in overuse injuries and mental and physical burnout. The purpose of the study was to investigate Kentucky junior high (JHS) and high school (HS) cross country coaches' perception on issues related to runners' injuries, training levels, and psychological/mental condition. Sixty eight cross-country coaches completed an 11-item survey covered three aspects: (1) athletes' psychological motivation, (2) training related issues, and (3) injury risk and budgetary issues. The results indicated that coaches did not feel that JHS runners are more likely to burn out or drop out. Coaches also felt that training volume and intensity are slightly lower for the JHS runners as compared to the HS runners. However, after analyzing the running time of top-5 male and female JHS runners from 2010 to 2014, it was found that 40% of them did not get any better placement as they get older. The results inspired the authors to question whether it is worthy to bring up a JHS runner to compete at the high school level. To avoid issues related to overtraining and excessive injuries, we advocate that Kentucky High School Athletic Association adopts policies to regulate the amount of races that JHS runners may engage in high school competitions.
- Subjects
JUNIOR high schools; COACHES (Athletics); SPORTS competitions; PSYCHOLOGY
- Publication
Kentucky SHAPE JOURNAL, 2017, Vol 54, Issue 2, p59
- ISSN
1071-2577
- Publication type
Article