Personal and situational factors that influence coaches' ability to care.

The purpose of this study was to explore how personal and situational factors may influence sport coaches' caring practices. 130 youth sport coaches completed an online survey including perceptions of caring, emotional intelligence, and leadership behaviours. Additionally, coaches were prompted to consider a situation when it was easy or hard to care while also identifying influencing factors. Results revealed coaches' awareness of others' emotions, coaches' ability to use their emotions, and coaches' lower use of autocratic behaviours significantly predicted their perceptions of caring on their teams. Open-ended findings revealed that having a core value/philosophy centred on caring, maintaining a collaborative and welcoming culture, engaging in relationship building, using empathy and listening skills, possessing personal experiences/expertise, encountering advantageous situations, or having positive athlete behaviour made it easier to care. It was more difficult for coaches to care when they experienced poor athlete or parent behaviour, unhelpful situational factors, lack of team culture, differing opinions among staff, or personal factors. These findings provide coaches insight into factors that may influence their ability to care.

The Use of an Optical Measurement System to Monitor Sports Performance.

The purpose of this study was to compare ground contact time between an optical measurement system and a force platform. Participants in this study included six collegiate level athletes who performed drop jumps and sprint strike steps for a total of 15 repetitions each. Ground contact data was simultaneously collected from an optical measurement system and a force platform, at a sampling frequency of 1000 Hz. Data was then analyzed with Pearson's correlation and paired sample t-tests. The measures from the optical measurement system were found to be significantly higher (p < 0.001) than measures from the force platform in both conditions. Although significantly different, the extremely large relationships (0.979, 0.993) found between the two devices suggest the optical sensor is able to detect similar changes in performance to that of a force platform. Practitioners may continue to utilize optical sensors to monitor performance as it may provide a superior user-friendly alternative to more traditional based monitoring procedures, but must comprehend the inherent limitations due to the design of the optical sensors.