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JOURNAL
OF
SPORTS SCIENCE &
MEDICINE
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Research
article
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WHY DO THEY ENGAGE IN SUCH HARD PROGRAMS? THE SEARCH FOR EXCELLENCE IN YOUTH BASKETBALL |
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Carlos E. Gonçalves1  ,
Manuel J. Coelho e Silva1, Humberto M. Carvalho1 and
Ângela Gonçalves2 |
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1Faculty of Sport Sciences and Physical Education - University of Coimbra, Portugal 2European Bioinformatics Institute - Cambridge, United Kingdom |
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© Journal of Sports Science and Medicine (2011) 10, 458 - 464 |
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| ABSTRACT | |||
| Excellent performance in sport has a strong positive relationship
with the accumulated hours of practice. The specialization years are seen
as a decisive moment to lift the skill level, athletic readiness and commitment
but the selection and orientation of talent has been strongly dependent
of biological and motor variables. The purpose of this study is to describe
the achievement and motivation variables that can explain the belonging
to an elite competitive level of young basketball players. Eighty-two basketball
players under 16 years fulfilled the WOFO Questionnaire (Spence and Helmreich,
1983),
and an adapted version of the DPMQ (De Bruin, Rikers and Schmidt, 2007).
Forty players (mean age 15. 8 ± 0.96) were engaged in high performance centres
and forty-two (mean age 15.6 ± 1.01) played in national level clubs. A decision
tree and a random forest analysis between elite and national level players
were performed. The most discriminant variable was Will to Excel, with 85,2%
true positives in elite or national level. Mastery and competitiveness did
not enter the final model. The will to reach excellence in performance can
be considered as a condition to engage in more specialized and demanding
practice. The assessment of the path to expertise only through motor variables
or through the accumulated hours of deliberate practice is limited and can
lead to mistaken identification or orientation of young sport talents. The
use of a more comprehensive model is needed. Key words: Youth, talent specialization, motivation, expertise. |
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