The development of sport expertise: Current issues and different perspectives

Abstract

The Great British Medalist Project (see Rees et al., 2016; Hardy et al., 2017) exemplifies the efforts to understand the development of sport expertise, as well as the complexity and multidimensional nature of athlete development. In the same spirit, this symposium focuses on the multidisciplinary constraints involved in the development of sport expertise. The first three presentations in this symposium explore popular secondary factors that constraint athlete development. Schorer et al explore the influence of different types of relative age effects (age within participation cohorts) on indicators of performance in football players (i.e., monetary value), while Smith and Weir examine the influence of relative age and level of competition on dropout from female developmental soccer in Ontario over a 7 year period. Farah et al examine the influence of geographic factors related to early athlete development environments (i.e., community population density and proximity to major developmental programs) on the development of Canadian National Hockey League draftees. In the fourth presentation, Wilson and colleagues also examine early developmental environments in their study of the relationship between an athlete's skill level and their family's (parent and sibling) physical activity and sport participation patterns. In the fifth presentation, Tedesqui and Young examine practice behaviour. Specifically, they describe the longitudinal influence of psychological grit (perseverance of effort and consistency of interests) on athlete's level of practice engagement. To conclude, our discussant, Joseph Baker, will discuss the implications of these presentations for future research, theoretical models athlete development, and talent identification and development programs.