Abstract
Identifying the ages when highly skilled athletes reach various sporting milestones contributes to our understanding of the typical time-course of career progression from sport initiation to international level competitor. This information can be used to guide sport programming and as a benchmark to assess athlete development. Details regarding the attainment of sporting milestones were collected from 42 male Australian junior international level athletes in the sports of soccer (n=24), basketball (n=12), and volleyball (n=6) (Mage=17.27±1.28). One-way ANOVAs were conducted to compare the ages at which athletes from different sports reached 31 sporting milestones. Significant group differences were found for almost all milestones, including main sport initiation, first participation at the local, state, national, and international levels of competition, and specialisation. Post-hoc tests revealed that soccer players reached each milestone first, followed by basketball players, then volleyball players, with the difference between soccer and volleyball players significant at p < .05. Interestingly, when the number of years between sport initiation and the attainment of each of the remaining milestones was compared, the difference between sports was not as marked. These results suggest that although the absolute ages at which athletes reach sporting milestones may differ between sports, the relative time to reach these milestones following initiation of main sport is similar.
