Résumé
Adolescent girls drop out of sport at a higher rate than boys of the same age (CWS, 2024). By providing opportunities for girls to be engaged in holistic sport participation, these trends can be reversed. Particularly, developing adolescent female athletes as leaders within their sport teams has shown promising, but scant research has explored how coaches can support holistic development of their athletes’ leadership outside of the athletic environment. The purpose of this poster is to outline how two coaches supported holistic athlete leadership development through engaging in a year-long program. The participants in this self-study include two coaches and two athletes involved in the Play to Lead program. This is a Canadian-wide program funded by Jumpstart that supports athletes on their journeys as nascent leaders in sport and beyond. Each athlete invites a coach on that journey, and the coach is expected to assist the athlete in a leadership project of their choice. Exploring each milestone and task of the program through journal reflections and assignments, we unveil how these coaches supported the athletes in selecting different projects (program development and media broadcasting), challenges and successes in the tasks, and the subsequent outcomes of the projects in relation to the development of key transferable leadership skills including confidence, communication, collaboration, networking, and creativity.
