1-074 - Teammates, What Are They Good For?: A Developmental Examination of Peers in Adolescent Athletes’ Extracurricular Sports

Session Type: Paper Symposium

Integrative Statement

Extracurricular settings provide adolescents key ecological assets to promote positive outcomes (Lerner et al., 2015). However, sport is an extracurricular setting controversial for development, such that sport promotes some outcomes (e.g., physical health) and hinders others (e.g., character attributes). According to game reasoning theory (Bredemeier & Shields, 2006), some athletes’ strict focus on winning the “game” compromises personal development opportunities for “real life.” Understanding which elements of sport ecologies matter for developmental outcomes is critical to enhance sport as a positive youth development setting.

For decades, sport psychologists have acknowledged the role of teammates to support (or hinder) their fellow athletes. However, sport and exercise science research has largely focused on performance outcomes. The purpose of this symposium is to elucidate the role of adolescent athletes’ teammates for various developmental outcomes. This interdisciplinary symposium combines core strengths of developmental science (e.g., expertise in peer relationships), with knowledge from sport psychology about the role of teammates.

First, researchers challenge the physical benefits of sport, finding that teammates’ weight-related discussions negatively affected athletes’ eating behaviors through their body-related beliefs. Second, using a practitioner-developed model, researchers demonstrate how intra-team conflict, but not competition, was detrimental for character attributes at individual, team, and game levels. The third presentation demonstrates how highly cohesive teammates were detrimental for influential (e.g., popular) athletes’ loneliness, but beneficial for athletes with less influential sociometric statuses. An international peer relationships scholar will discuss contextual variation in peer processes, methods for capturing peer variation, and implications for practice in peer settings.

Sub Unit

• Peer Relations

Chair

• Andrea Vest Ettekal, Texas A&M University

Discussant

• Toon Cillessen, Radboud University

Individual Presentations

• Athletes’ Engagement in Problematic Eating Behaviors within Sport: The Role of Teammates and Adolescents’ Beliefs about the Body - Presenting Author: Kaitlyn Ann Ferris, University of Chicago; Benjamin Oosterhoff, Baylor College of Medicine/Texas Children's Hospital

• Peer Motivational Climate and Character Development: Testing a Practitioner-Developed Youth Sport Model - Presenting Author: Jennifer P. Agans, Cornell University; Shaobing Su, Tufts University; Andrea Vest Ettekal, Texas A&M University

• Team Cohesion Moderates Association between Sociometric Status and Psychological Functioning for Female College Student-Athletes - Presenting Author: Andrea D. Mata, University of Findlay; Ben A. Richter, University of Findlay; Andrew P. Makepeace, University of Findlay