The game as source of stress in team sports

Abstract

Competitive stress is constantly explored in sport psychology researches. On these researches the game is the factor that produces the majority of the stressful situations. The main purpose of this study was to identify the stressful situations related to the game in team sports, according to the opinion of youth athletes, comparing the situations according to gender and type of sport. 417 athletes with age from 14 to 19 took part on the study. They were basketball, handball and volleyball players. It was used the Formulary for Identification of Stressful Situations in Game and the results showed that the most frequent situations identified by the athletes were: to make mistakes in decisive moments of the game, to lose a game that was almost won, to repeat the same mistakes, bad referees and to make mistakes that lead to the team defeat. There was a high correlation between the situations rank according to the gender (rs = 0.89; p < 0.01). The same result was observed among the situations rank according to the sports (c2 = 35.52; p < 0.01). Situations related to individual and collective competence were the most frequent according to the athlete's opinion. The situations related to important people (coaches, referees and team mates) were also frequently identified by the athletes.