Abstract
Much is known about the athlete to coach transition, and how athletic experiences can influence motivations to coach—whether that be to give back to their sport or not wanting to move on from competitive sport post-athletic career. However, less is known about the athlete to official (i.e., referees, umpires, judges) transition. Through a critical realist lens, we examined how sport officials’ youth sport experiences contributed to their motivation to officiate. A semi-structured interview was conducted with 17 sport officials (ten males and seven females) from ten sports in Canada with 14.8 years average experience. All officials had experienced a transition from athlete to official. Data were analyzed using a Grounded Theory approach. The grounded theory denotes that the youth athlete to sport official transition is influenced by the type and quality of motivation held, the barriers encountered, and the available resources to officials. We propose while high-quality motivations (e.g., intrinsic; ‘giving back to the sport’) stemming from positive experiences in youth sport, and perceived resources (e.g., positive role models) ease the transition—significant barriers (e.g., inadequate training, abuse), unstable motivations (e.g., extrinsic; ‘just a part time job’) and/or limited resources made the transition harder. Therefore, although youth sport is a powerful vehicle to develop sustained involvement in sporting roles like officiating, its participation alone is not enough to motivate all youth sport athletes to transition into officiating as there still remains significant barriers that impact their motivations to transition.
