Coach-athlete relationship and youth positive experience in sport extracurricular

The quality of the coach-athlete relationship is recognized as a positive experience by young people in sports, which can be decisive for a long-term sports practice. Our aim was to verify if the quality of the relationship coach-athlete is related to the perception of sport as a positive experience by young athletes. The participants are 630 young athletes (350 male; 280 female) in four different team sports: handball (26%), volleyball (25%), futsal (31%) and basketball (18%), participating in state competitions, which are qualifying for the national championship. The athletes’ age was 16.06 ± 0.82 years with an average time of practice of 4.48 ± 2.54 years. The data was collected using the Coach-Athlete Relationship (CART-Q Athlete) and the Youth Experience in Sport (YES-Y) questionnaires, both validated for the Portuguese language. Although the literature recognizes the coach-athlete relationship as positive, the results found in this study suggest that the quality of the coach-athlete relationship, by itself, does not influences the perception of sports as a positive experience by young people in sports, in the extracurricular school context.