Sport Psychology Interventions With Young Athletes: The Perspective of the Sport Psychology Practitioner

Abstract

Young competitive athletes are not miniature elite athletes; they are a distinct client group to whom sport psychology practitioners (SPPs) increasingly deliver services. Interventions with this client group are often undertaken by newly educated SPPs who are in need of good guiding principles. Yet, there is a lack of research informing SPPs’ work with this group. In this current study, semistructured qualitative interviews were conducted with four experienced practitioners about their most successful interventions in competitive youth sport. Analysis showed three major themes: (a) young athletes should be equipped with a holistic skills package that enables them to handle a number of existential challenges; (b) young athletes are embedded in an environment (coaches, experts, teammates etc.) that should be involved in the interventions; and (c) interventions with young athletes should maintain a long-term focus. These themes are discussed in the context of current literature on sport psychology service delivery.

Full text

245
Journal of Clinical Sport Psychology, 2014, 8, 245-260
http://dx.doi.org/10.1123/jcsp.2014-0033
© 2014 Human Kinetics, Inc.
Kristoffer Henriksen, Carsten Hvid Larsen, and Louise Kamuk Storm are with the Institute of Sport
Science and Clinical Biomechanics, University of Southern Denmark, Denmark. Knud Ryom is with
the Department of Nutrition, Exercise, and Sports, University of Copenhagen. Address author corre-
spondence to Kristoffer Henriksen at khenriksen@health.sdu.dk.
Sport Psychology Interventions
With Young Athletes: The Perspective
of the Sport Psychology Practitioner
Kristoffer Henriksen, Carsten Hvid Larsen, Louise Kamuk
Storm
University of Southern Denmark
Knud Ryom
University of Copenhagen
Young competitive athletes are not miniature elite athletes; they are a distinct client
group to whom sport psychology practitioners (SPPs) increasingly deliver services.
Interventions with this client group are often undertaken by newly educated SPPs
who are in need of good guiding principles. Yet, there is a lack of research inform-
ing SPPs’ work with this group. In this current study, semistructured qualitative
interviews were conducted with four experienced practitioners about their most
successful interventions in competitive youth sport. Analysis showed three major
themes: (a) young athletes should be equipped with a holistic skills package that
enables them to handle a number of existential challenges; (b) young athletes are
embedded in an environment (coaches, experts, teammates etc.) that should be
involved in the interventions; and (c) interventions with young athletes should
maintain a long-term focus. These themes are discussed in the context of current
literature on sport psychology service delivery.
Keywords: mental skills, young athletes, sport psychology practitioner, sport
environment, talent development
Talented young athletes go through at least a decade of hardship with the aim
of reaching the elite level in sport (Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Römer, 1993).
A successful outcome requires the development of physical, technical, tactical,
and psychological capacities (Abbott & Collins, 2004; Elbe & Beckmann, 2006).
Although the practice of sport psychology designed to improve performance has
amply demonstrated its value with elite-level athletes (Andersen, 2000; Gould,
Dieffenbach, & Moffett, 2002; Vealey, 2007), sport psychologists are less aware

246 Henriksen et al.
of its effect on young athletes because discussions on the cognitive developmental
processes involved in learning psychological skills are rare in the sport psychol-
ogy literature (McCarthy, Jones, Harwood, & Olivier, 2010). Despite a strong
research base in the eld of developmental psychology, the physical, social, and
psychological challenges and changes encountered during maturation are less often
acknowledged in sport psychology.
At the same time, it has been suggested that, because of their rapid develop-
ment, young athletes may benet even more from learning psychological skills
than older athletes (Vealey, 1988) and that with the ever-present professionalization
(Heinilä, 1982) of talent development including the organization of sport-specic
centers of excellence around the world, young athletes are increasingly becoming
an important client group for the sport psychology practitioner (McCarthy et al.,
2010). Along these lines, researchers have pointed out that young athletes who are
introduced to psychological skills training (PST) at an early age are more likely to
use such services than mature elite athletes (Blom, Hardy, Burke, & Joyner, 2003)
and that practitioners should be cognizant of the social, cognitive, and emotional
development of young athletes when delivering sport psychology services (Visek,
Harris, & Blom, 2009).
These facts bear witness to the importance of paying special consideration to
the delivery of sport psychology services to talented young athletes. In the current
study, we interviewed four experienced sport psychology practitioners about their
most successful interventions in youth competitive sport with the aim of garnering
useful recommendations about delivering services to this particular group. Investi-
gating these issues from the perspective of the sport psychology practitioner (SPP),
we aimed to supplement current applied perspectives and guidelines.
Sport Psychology Delivery for Young Athletes
An athletic career is a long and winding journey during which an athlete must go
through a number of transitions within sport and other spheres of life, each present-
ing different challenges and opportunities for growth or crisis, and each demanding
different types of psychological support (Stambulova, Alfermann, Statler, & Côté,
2009). At the same time, developmental psychology draws our attention to the fact
that a major challenge during adolescence is the development of a self-identity,
and that an important challenge for young athletes is to fully engage in their sport
while not experiencing identity foreclosure (e.g., Wylleman & Lavallee, 2004).
Martindale and Mortimer (2011) assert that the primary task of a talent development
environment is to equip the athletes with a holistic skills package containing “a
wide variety of cognitive, perceptual and motor skills . . . as many such ‘teachable’
factors are important in distinguishing the best performers at later stages” (p. 71).
In recent years, there has been an increasing trend toward regarding young athletes
as a group that needs tailored interventions, including specic skills, strategies and
considerations that meet the particular needs of the group.
In a qualitative study, McCarthy et al. (2010) asked 118 athletes between ages
10–15 to complete an open-ended questionnaire to explore their implicit under-
standing of psychological skills such as goal-setting, imagery, and relaxation. The
authors demonstrated that young athletes implicitly hold different understandings
about such abstract psychological skills than more mature athletes. For this reason,

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 247
the teaching of these skills should be adapted to the developmental level of the
athletes. A grounded theory study based on qualitative interviews with young
talented soccer players on the verge of making a breakthrough into professional
ranks (Holt & Dunn, 2004) combined with a similar study of subelite soccer play-
ers in a professional talent development system on the verge of not making it into
the professional ranks (Holt & Mitchell, 2006) have investigated the psychosocial
competences associated with a successful career in soccer. Together, these studies
demonstrate that a specic set of psychological characteristics are associated with
making it into the professional ranks; a set of skills that do not necessarily cor-
respond with the skills needed to succeed at the elite level. More specically they
highlight pathway and agency thinking, resilience, and the ability to seek social
support as determinants of a successful career path.
Building on the idea that aspiring elite athletes encounter challenges that are
specic to their complex pathway to the elite level, MacNamara, Button, and Collins
(2010a, 2010b) performed two qualitative interview studies with developing athletes
and, in one of the studies, their parents. Based on a grounded theory approach, they
introduced a distinction between the psychological characteristics of excellence
(PCE) and the psychological characteristics of developing excellence (PCDE), such
as commitment, realistic performance evaluations, planning and organization skills,
and self-awareness. Although MacNamara and colleagues do not investigate the
skills needed by elite level athletes, they argue that the delivery of sport psychol-
ogy services to young athletes should acknowledge that the skills needed to reach
the elite level are different from the skills needed to succeed at elite level and thus
PCDEs should be systematically employed in talent development practices. This is
supported by a case study of a Danish youth soccer academy. Based on participant
observations of daily practices and qualitative interviews with athletes, coaches
and managers, the study found that the most important psychosocial skills needed
to succeed in the particular environment were not classic mental skills but rather
self-awareness, managing performance and process outcomes, setting own goals,
the ability to use team skills, and general social skills (Larsen, Alfermann, & Chris-
tensen, 2012). These ideas are further supported by a study on young team sport
athletes (Holland, Woodcock, Cumming, & Duda, 2010), which retrospectively
interviewed 43 athletes in focus groups about the mental qualities required and
the mental skills used to facilitate their development. Through inductive content
analysis they found qualities such as enjoyment, adaptability, and self-awareness,
which are not typically among the qualities found in studies of elite-level athletes
(Gould et al., 2002; Vealey, 2007). The above mentioned studies, in spite of dif-
ferences in aim, methodology, and target groups, suggest that sport psychology
services aimed at developing athletes should focus on skills specically selected
to match their needs. Despite these ndings, sport psychology interventions with
young athletes often still provide little rationale for the targeted skills.
Literature has further demonstrated that the delivery of sport psychology
service should be organized to meet the needs of young athletes. For example,
it has been demonstrated that successful talent development is inuenced by the
environment in which the talented athlete is embedded (Henriksen, Stambulova, &
Roessler, 2010, 2011; Martindale, Collins, & Abraham, 2007). The obvious exten-
sion of this idea is that expert services should be integrated into the environment
and involve key gures in the athlete’s life. This would imply that the organization

248 Henriksen et al.
(team or club management) supports the effort; that coaches and staff are involved
and knowledgeable about the aims and content of the intervention as well as able
and willing to back them up; and that psychological skills are regarded as equally
important as technical and other skills within the basic values of the team or club
culture. Along these lines, it has been argued that parents play an important role
in young athletes’ lives and therefore it would be worthwhile for the SPP to target
parents in their interventions (Lauer, Gould, Roman, & Pierce, 2010a, 2010b).
Indeed, describing a sport psychology intervention in youth soccer, Harwood (2008)
argued that the intervention was successful because it focused on skills selected to
match the needs of the young athletes (such as communication and commitment),
involved the training not only of athletes but also of coaches and parents, and
integrated the development of the targeted psychological skills in the daily soccer
(technical and physical) training.
Addressing the lack of available resources to guide sport psychology interven-
tions that target a youth sport population, Visek et al. (2009) introduced the Youth
Sport Consulting Model (YSCM), which serves as a framework to guide the sport
psychology practitioner in the delivery of service. Building on more general and
extensive service delivery models (Poczwardowski, Sherman, & Henschen, 1998),
this phase-based model gives important advice on how a practitioner can: (a) iden-
tify an appropriate age group, (b) gain entry, (c) select and present psychological
skills, (d) evaluate the consultation, (e) integrate PST during the off-season, and
(f) temporarily or permanently terminate the service provision.
Sport Psychology Service Delivery
by New Practitioners
The fact that young athletes have specic needs is not the only reason to make
an effort to provide guidelines for sport psychology intervention with this target
group. Another reason pertains to the practitioners who are actually in the eld
working with the target group. Although it has been noted that the sport psychology
industry “has a much deeper and more profound role to play in youth sport (and
youth-coach education) compared with any other life stage” (Harwood, 2008, p.
131), working with young athletes is still often used as an entry into the profession
by relatively new and inexperienced sport psychology practitioners. Whereas sports
federations and clubs may be very particular about whom they invite to work with
their best athletes, it is easier for new sport psychology practitioners to gain access
to working with younger athletes. To our knowledge, no empirical studies have
demonstrated that novice practitioners work less effectively with young athletes than
more experienced ones. Still, several authors point to the fact that the availability
of real-world training experiences to graduate students varies greatly (Wylleman,
Harwood, Elbe, & de Caluwé, 2009). Tashman & Tenenbaum (2013) state that:
When students advance directly from coursework to real-world practice with
unsystematic learning and training experiences, they engage in a trial and
error process that may unintentionally harm their learning and growth, the
clients with whom they are working, and the perceptions of the eld of sport
psychology (p. 72).

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 249
Lacking resources to guide them, novice practitioners may end up designing
generic rather than individually adapted programs, teaching mental skills rather than
helping the athletes handle the existential issues involved in an elite sports career,
and failing to understand the culture they are operating within (Nesti, 2010). We
therefore argue that novice practitioners are in greater need of specic and reliable
guidelines to inform their work than more experienced practitioners (Stambulova
& Johnson, 2010).
A highly effective method for disseminating knowledge is to observe expe-
rienced individuals in the eld of interest (Fifer, Henschen, Gould, & Ravizza,
2008). Accordingly, the purpose of the current study is to capture and present the
ideas, theories, and strategies that experienced applied sport psychology consul-
tants working in a competitive youth sport setting believe to be effective. The aim
is to develop applicable guidelines to inform sport psychology practitioners in the
design, implementation, and evaluation of their services with this target group.
Method
Although there is no substitute for rst-hand experience with the science and art of
delivering sport psychology services, learning from more experienced practitioners
is a valid way to gain an understanding of the eld (Fifer et al., 2008). As illus-
trated above, most literature on sport psychology service targeting young athletes
has taken the perspective of the athletes and in rare cases that of the parents and
coaches. In contrast, the current study takes the perspective of the sport psychol-
ogy practitioner and focuses not on the nature of the successful athlete but on the
nature of the successful sport psychology intervention. The study is a qualitative
interview study with four sport psychology practitioners who have experience in
working with youth competitive athletes (ages 13–19).
Participants
In Denmark, the sports psychology profession has been characterized by a diversity
of approaches with little overarching consensus on the professional philosophy and
interventions strategies among consultants in the eld. In 2008, Team Denmark
(Denmark’s organization for elite sport) decided to strengthen sport psychology
service delivery in Danish elite sport by employing a permanent staff of sport
psychologists and formulating a professional philosophy (Henriksen, Diment, &
Hansen, 2011). Criteria for inclusion in the study were (a) being associated with
the Team Denmark sport psychology team, which means that the practitioner
works with athletes who are among the best in their sport in Denmark, and (b) a
minimum of eight years of experience delivering sport psychology in a Danish
context and with youth athletes. At the time, the team consisted of four employed
staff members and four external consultants. Four practitioners lived up to these
criteria and were selected for the study (one female, three male). They all agreed
to participate. Three are staff members and one is an external consultant working
for the team. Between them, the four practitioners have 51 years of experience of
working with young competitive athletes (8, 8, 10, and 25 years). Three are full-time
sport psychologists and one also holds a part-time position at a university. Although

250 Henriksen et al.
today they mostly work with elite-level athletes, they have spent considerable time
working with young athletes and still do.
Research Method and Instruments
Kvale and Brinkmann (2008) dene elite interviews as interviews with “leaders or
experts in a community, who are usually in powerful positions . . . and being asked
about their opinions and thoughts” about a certain topic (p. 147). Thus, interviewing
experts can be seen as a time-efcient strategy, as “the experts are seen as ‘crystal-
lization points’ for practical insider knowledge and are interviewed as surrogates
for a wider circle of players” (Bogner, Littig, & Menz, 2009, p. 2). Aware of the
specic challenges of interviewing experts, an effort was made not to interview
them as experts (asking for their theoretical considerations or their “recipe” for
a perfect intervention) but rather to consult them as practitioners (asking them to
share specic examples of their practice). Therefore, a semistructured interview
guide (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008) that focused on specic experiences and inter-
ventions was created. The interviews started out with a broad and very open-ended
question: “Would you tell me about a specic intervention with youth competitive
athletes which you consider to be successful?” This was followed by more specic
but still open-ended questions to prompt elaboration, such as “Why do you think
this intervention worked well?” Second, the interviewees were asked to recount a
less successful intervention and reect on what went wrong. Finally, and only if
the interviewees had not already commented on these issues, the interviewer asked
more specic questions about the content, structure, and organization of successful
sport psychology interventions in competitive youth sport, such as “Where did the
work take place?” and “Whom did you involve in the intervention?”
Procedure
We contacted the participants, informed them of the purpose of the study, gained
their acceptance, and made interview appointments. The interviews were carried
out at the interviewees’ workplace and lasted between 45–60 min (53 min on aver-
age). The interviews were recorded and transcribed verbatim. Full anonymity was
guaranteed to the participants in the study.
Data Treatment and Trustworthiness
The data analysis followed the two-step method for organizing and interpreting
qualitative data (Côté, Salmela, Baria, & Russel, 1993). The rst step consisted
of reading and rereading transcripts so that meaningful text segments or raw data
units could be identied or coded. These units represented a single idea or piece of
information. The second step consisted of creating categories by regrouping similar
raw data units. These categories were used to restructure the data into manageable
themes, which in turn reected the greatest possible internal homogeneity and
external heterogeneity within categories and were in accord with previous qualita-
tive studies in the eld (e.g., Holland et al., 2010). As a third step in the analysis,
each theme was subjected to meaning condensation (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008).
Ongoing investigator triangulation (Denzin, 2006) meant the authors reassessed
the coding, categorization, and condensation of each data unit until agreement was

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 251
reached, which established peer validity (Kvale & Brinkmann, 2008) and enhanced
the accuracy of interpretations.
Findings
First of all, it is clear from the interviews that providing sport psychology services
to talented young athletes makes sense in the eyes of the practitioners and also that
such services must be tailored to this particular client group. The four interviewed
practitioners all emphasized that much is to be gained from helping young athletes
build the capacity to overcome the many obstacles they will encounter during their
sporting career.
More specically, data analysis revealed three high-order themes. These are
areas of particular importance with regard to providing sport psychology services
to young athletes: (a) young athletes have special needs; (b) young athletes are
embedded in an environment; and (c) interventions with young athletes should be
organized to allow for long-term development.
Young Athletes Have Special Needs
First and foremost the practitioners emphasized that the young athletes must be
seen as people, not only as athletes. The practitioners emphasized that young ath-
letes are not “miniature elite athletes.” As a consequence, the practitioners take an
interest in the athlete as a whole person and his or her life situation. Further, they
aim to provide the young athletes with a holistic skills package that includes but
also goes beyond mental skills, and which includes a variety of psychosocial skills,
not all of which are directly related to sport. One of the practitioners described the
holistic approach in this way:
It is very important to teach young athletes to handle life as an elite athlete.
But the challenges involved in this can be quite different. For a swimmer, a
major challenge could be keeping focus in school after hard morning training
sessions. For a sailor, a challenge could be to contribute to group-based project
assignments in school, because the sailor often travels for longer periods, and
another challenge would be to manage the many demands involved in booking
ight tickets, planning training and so on. We have to tailor our interventions
to the daily challenges of the athletes.
When asked about the focus of the interventions, the practitioners highlighted
a number of psychosocial skills such as goal-setting; coping with adversity in sport
and life; handling injuries and other challenges in the transition from junior to senior
level; prioritizing and planning daily life and balancing sport, school, recovery, and
social life; and being aware of the social network as a resource. One practitioner
explained how he would sometimes ask athletes to draw a “map” of the key people
in their lives and ask them to specify their roles and attitudes:
I will then ask the athlete: ‘How do you make sure, your immediate environ-
ment works for you? Which people support you, and which do the opposite?
What can you learn from your network, and how can you activate the support
you need?’

252 Henriksen et al.
Another common approach among the four practitioners was to build slowly
what they referred to as a professional attitude in the athletes. A key element was
the ability of an athlete to distinguish between factors within or outside their control.
The practitioners emphasized the value of learning not to waste time and energy on
things that are outside one’s control. On the other hand, it is equally important to
learn that one can actually inuence a lot of things; that many important aspects of
life as an athlete are within one’s control. The practitioners would sometimes ask
the athletes to create lists of the things within or outside their control, and discuss
strategies for either letting go of the things that could not be controlled or taking
responsibility for the things that could. This process was designed to prepare the
athletes for life as an elite athlete.
Young Athletes Are Embedded in an Environment
The practitioners all agreed that one key to successful sport psychology interven-
tions in youth sport is acknowledging that athletes are embedded in an environment.
This fact should not be disregarded in the service delivery. More specically, this
general point was manifested in two distinct subthemes: being in the environment
and involving the environment.
The rst subtheme, being in the environment, relates to the location of the
service delivery. The practitioners all agreed that performing psychological inter-
vention in the athletes’ environment is more successful than working in an ofce
or other outside setting, as exemplied by this quote:
I don’t have a moment’s doubt that I prefer delivering service in their everyday
environment, on their home court. That is where they feel most comfortable,
most open. I would rather not invite them into my ofce, which is a completely
unaccustomed context for them. The closer we can get to their normal sur-
roundings, the better.
All four practitioners emphasized their preference for bringing sport psychol-
ogy into the athletes’ daily practice sessions. Indeed, the best cases described by
the practitioners all involved sport psychology service delivery as a natural and
incorporated part of the athletes’ sports environment. Because the athletes have to
be able to use psychological skills in their daily training, this is also where those
skills should be taught. The practitioners argued that young athletes all too rarely
manage to integrate skills in training, which they have learned outside of the natural
sport environment.
The practitioners further contended that informal talks can be quite effective
to build rapport but the opportunity to engage in such informal talks requires the
presence of the sport psychologists in the environment. Being in the environment
also provides the practitioners with the opportunity to observe and assess the
athletes in training and competition, as demonstrated by this practitioner’s quote:
I believe I intervene in many different settings. Of course I plan and conduct
specic workshops, but what happens over lunch or dinner and in training is
just as important. In a training camp I often feel that the informal talks have
a high value.

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 253
A practitioner made a nal point about conducting sport psychology interven-
tions as part of athletes’ daily life; that it allows for a group organization, in which
the whole training team participates:
I think that group organization works really well. First of all, I believe the
athletes benet from listening to each other. They realize they are not alone
and that many other athletes have the same kinds of struggles. Also, they can
remind each other of basic messages and strategies when they meet every day.
The second subtheme, involving the environment, relates to the attempt of the
practitioners to involve family, coaches, and sometimes relevant peers as much as
possible in interventions. The practitioners stress that the support of coaches, par-
ents, and managers is crucial to the success of interventions. Therefore, involving
parents and coaches and informing them of the purpose and focus of interventions is
a very important task. For example, a practitioner highlighted how he would some-
times invite parents to listen in on a workshop and would even provide workshops
for parents with the aim of teaching them how they could best support their children:
We have on some occasions invited the parents to take part in the work. During
workshops with a specic focus, they have been allowed to sit at the back and
listen. Sometimes we have taken time out and asked the parents: ‘What do
you think about what you hear?’ or ‘What has surprised you the most during
these discussions?’ It is my impression that the parents really appreciate it,
and usually the athletes nd it to be OK.
Making sure the coaches support the work and are familiar with the purpose
and content of the sport psychology service is even more crucial for success, for
several reasons. First of all, it is important that the coaches attribute importance to
the work, particularly in front of the athletes. Beyond that, since the practitioners
cannot be in the environment on a daily basis, the coaches have an important task
in terms of asking follow-up questions on a daily basis and thereby ensuring that
the psychological perspectives are incorporated in the work, as one practitioner
indicated:
It helps a lot, when a coach backs up your work. The athletes look up to the
coach, so when the athletes can feel that the coach considers sport psychology
to be a natural and important part of life as an athlete, everything is just easier.
If the coach gives the impression it is unimportant, the athletes will not buy
into it. And perhaps the most important way for a coach to show that sport
psychology is important is to join the workshops, take an interest, be curious
and ask questions. For this to work, we [sport psychology practitioners] have a
big responsibility to tell them what we do and why it is important. We also need
to help them be interested, back us up, and ask the right questions. Sometimes
I provide the coaches with a little interview guide and tell them: ‘These are
the themes we have been working on and here are some good questions for
you to ask during or after training.’
The practitioners observed that sometimes time constraints, logistics, or other
barriers stood in the way of their work. This was particularly salient with regard to

254 Henriksen et al.
integrating the sport psychology service delivery in daily training. When this is not
possible, the task of informing coaches and parents becomes even more important,
because they can serve as a “broker” and support the young athlete in the process
of putting sport psychology into practice. As an example, a practitioner describes
how he distinguished between the realistic and the ideal intervention process:
The ideal set-up would be to take part in the daily training once a week and to
integrate the training of psychological skills in the athletes’ physical training.
But this is not always realistic. So the ideal and realistic set-up is to be part
of their training a little less often but to help and supervise the coach so that
he can follow up on the psychological issues in the daily training. Optimally,
what I would call the mental dialogue should be there every day.
Interventions Should Foster Long-Term Development
As the third and nal higher-order theme, analysis of the data revealed that inter-
ventions with young athletes should be organized to allow for long-term develop-
ment. In general, the practitioners approached the young prospects with patience
and were aware of the many transitions the athletes were going through in sport
as well as outside it. A practitioner emphasized that the young athletes are not just
preparing to enter elite-level sport but they are also in the middle of an identity-
forming process: “Sometimes we ask questions and get no answer. That does not
mean the question was wrong. You can’t rush these things.” In this regard, the
practitioners regarded sport psychology interventions in youth sport as an ongoing
and time-consuming process. Workshops should be short and frequent, and refrain
from introducing theoretical or abstract concepts. A successful intervention must
be built upon a trusting relationship and, to build trust, the practitioner must allow
time for the young athlete to mature and develop a positive attitude toward sport
psychology. In general, the practitioners adhered to the basic philosophy that with
youth sport process is more important than results. Therefore they were task-oriented
and preferred long-lasting interventions, preferably following a group of athletes
for years, as demonstrated in this practitioner’s quote:
Really it is the process that creates the basis for winning medals in the long
run. Talent development is about the long-term development, about building
resources in the young athletes to help them manage career transitions and
adversity, about helping them stay motivated. An athlete who wins medals as
a junior only to end his career before making it as a senior is not a success in
my book. Rather, that would be a dropout case, a case of unfullled potential.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to capture and present the ideas, theories, and strate-
gies that experienced applied sport psychology consultants working in a competitive
youth sport setting believe to be effective. It is hoped that such perspectives will
inspire other practitioners in the design, implementation, and evaluation of their
services with this target group. After analyzing interviews with four experienced
sport psychology practitioners about their most successful interventions, three

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 255
higher-order themes emerged, which can be considered as inspirational guide-
lines: (a) young athletes have special needs, (b) young athletes are embedded in
an environment, and (c) interventions with young athletes should foster long-term
development.
Sport Psychology Interventions With Young Athletes
The results of the present qualitative interview study support much contemporary
research on sport psychology with competitive young athletes. First and from an
overall perspective, the current study supports the general notion that young ath-
letes should not be treated as miniature versions of their adult counterparts (Visek
et al., 2009), which has implications for planning, implementing, and evaluating
psychological programs with this target group.
In terms of the content of sport psychology services aimed at young athletes,
the current study highlights that we must provide young athletes with a holistic
skills package containing a variety of psychosocial skills to enable them to: (a)
stay motivated, (b) be task-oriented, (c) cope with adversity in sport and life, (d)
handle injuries and other challenges in the transition from junior to senior level, (e)
prioritize and plan their daily life to balance sport, school, social life, and recovery,
and (f) be able to use their social network as a resource. These ndings are in line
with Martindale and Mortimer (2011), who argue that:
It is crucial that sports have a very clear and holistic developmental curriculum.
This would cover technical, tactical, physical, and mental development as a
minimum, whereby it would be possible to identify and develop progression
for any youngster of any ability within a program (p. 71)
The present results suggest that we should not only consider a holistic skills
package as one that covers mental, tactical, technical, and physical skills, but even
within the psychological area we need to work from a holistic perspective (Larsen
et al., 2012). This extends to the notion that the practitioner should take an interest
in the young athlete as a person, not only as an athlete, and provide services that
help the athlete manage the multitude of existential challenges involved in being an
athlete, a student, a son or daughter, a boy- or girlfriend, and so on (Nesti, 2004).
Previous research has contended the notion that young athletes need a different
set of skills to develop from the set of skills elite-level athletes need to perform
at the highest level (Holt & Dunn, 2004; Larsen et al., 2012; MacNamara et al.,
2010a, 2010b). However neither these studies nor the present one has included
elite-level athletes and therefore we should be careful to make direct comparisons.
Accordingly, although the contention seems reasonable, this is a task for future
research to determine.
This holistic approach as argued for by the practitioners in the present qualita-
tive study supports the strategy of holistic consulting, which is focused on: (a) man-
aging the psychological effects on the athlete’s performance of nonsport domains;
(b) developing the core individual beyond their athletic persona; and (c) recogniz-
ing the dynamic relationship between an athlete’s thoughts, feelings, physiology,
and behavior (Friesen & Orlick, 2010). Developing athletes beyond their athletic
persona is, however, a lengthy process (Price & Chahal, 2006) and managers and

256 Henriksen et al.
coaches in sport often suffer from a short-term perspective. In football (soccer),
for instance, the current employment expectancy of team managers/head coaches
in English league football stands at a record low of 1.4 years (Cruickshank & Col-
lins, 2012). Although the example is taken from professional elite-level football,
it is relevant to point to this trend. With the ever-increasing professionalization of
talent development (Heinilä, 1982), it is important to issue a clear warning against
adopting this trend from the professional ranks. From the perspective of delivering
sport psychology to young athletes, a long-term focus and a stable environment
are prerequisites for success.
The results of the current study suggest that delivering sport psychology
services inside the athletes’ daily training environment and within their training
groups, and informing and involving this environment (coaches, parents, managers,
and others) as much as possible, is essential. In this regard, the current study further
supports recent attempts to develop an ecological approach to talent development
(Henriksen, Stambulova, & Roessler, 2010, 2011; Martindale et al., 2007); one that
implies sport psychology practitioners should not only work with the individual
athletes but also optimize the entire environment around the athlete or team. More
specically, research from an ecological perspective has demonstrated that talent
development environments with a successful record of producing senior elite athletes
retain a holistic perspective; focus on the athletes’ long-term development; build
and maintain a strong and coherent organizational culture with consistency from
philosophy to methods; and integrate and coordinate systematic efforts to create
synergy among all the people involved in the athletes’ lives (e.g., Henriksen &
Christensen, 2013). Optimizing the environment and organizations in youth sport
is an important future task for the sport psychology practitioner.
Implications for the (New) Sport Psychology Practitioner
The Youth Sport Consulting Model (YSCM) is the most comprehensive educa-
tional framework for guiding and supporting sport psychology practitioners in the
implementation and delivery of sport psychology services for young athletes and
their sport organizations (Visek et al., 2009). The model proposes six phases in
the service delivery and provides important guidelines to inform each phase. The
importance of the framework is accentuated when we take into account that very
often the practitioners working with young athletes are relatively new in the eld
and therefore in extra need of a guiding framework. The purpose of the present
qualitative study was not to test or develop the YSCM but the information gathered
adds some new perspectives to the YSCM. More specically, the results support
the idea of a professional philosophy as a driving force in consultation and the
recommendation that such a philosophy should include a focus on the athlete as a
whole person and on the athlete’s lifestyle. Further, the results support the need to
establish open lines of communication in the environments and keep coaches and
parents informed about the consulting process, which can help prevent conicts
that could undermine the consulting relationship and process (Peterson, 2004). The
present study also supports the notion that educating coaches and parents as well
as the athletes is likely to be a worthwhile effort (Harwood, 2008; Lauer et al.,
2010a), and that the time spent by the practitioner in the environment is a crucial
investment in terms of establishing trusting athlete-practitioner, coach-practitioner,

Sport Psychology for Young Athletes 257
and parent-practitioner relationships and creating teachable moments (Visek et
al., 2009).
Unlike the YSCM, however, the four practitioners place little emphasis on
teaching mental skills and techniques (e.g., self-talk, arousal regulation, concen-
tration, and imagery). Rather, they emphasize helping the athletes manage the
multitude of existential challenges involved in becoming an elite athlete (Nesti,
2004). In addition, the four practitioners seem to favor longer interventions than
those recommended in the YSCM, preferably following the athletes for two years
or more with frequent sessions, with the aim of building trusting relationships and
sustainable psychosocial skills. Along these lines, Nesti (2010) argues that sport
psychology in football is dominated by a focus on mental skills training and that
newly educated sport psychology practitioners are mainly trained in this area.
He therefore argues that the new practitioner often lacks the necessary skills and
knowledge to provide more holistic counseling (e.g., working with self-knowledge,
identity, the athlete as a whole person). Learning the craft more fully would place
demands on the curriculum of university sport psychology courses, but equally
speaks to the need to integrate supervision and apprenticeships in the future educa-
tion of sport psychology practitioners (Wylleman et al., 2009).
Limitations and Future Research
Interviewing experienced practitioners in a given eld is an effective method for
disseminating knowledge (Fifer et al., 2008), and holds the potential for develop-
ing that eld. Accordingly, the current study aimed to capture the ideas, theories,
and strategies that experienced applied sport psychology consultants working in a
competitive youth sport setting believed to be effective. Some limitations should,
however, be considered. First, we only interviewed four practitioners, all of whom
work in Denmark. The delivery of sport psychology services is a culturally situ-
ated affair (Ryba, Schinke, & Tennenbaum, 2010) and an expansion of the study
to include a greater number of practitioners of different nationalities would be
welcome in the future.
A qualitative interview study like the present potentially encompasses a con-
rmation bias in the sense that people tend to favor information that conrms their
beliefs and preconceived ideas. This was dealt with by asking the practitioners to
describe what they actually did in practice and, when they talked about their values
and beliefs, by asking them to come up with examples from practice. A future
design could limit this bias further by encompassing triangulation either by data
source (e.g., by including the perspective of athletes) or by data method (e.g., by
including observational data).
Also, we realized during the study that being more specic in terms of age-
groups (midchildhood, early adolescence, or midadolescence) would likely make
the reections of the practitioners even more targeted.
In conclusion, we would like to suggest that future controlled trial studies
adhere to the specic recommendations of the current study. These recommenda-
tions include: (a) delivering a holistic skills package and helping athletes with the
multitude of existential challenges involved in reaching the elite level; (b) taking the
sport psychology service delivery to the athletes and involving key actors in their
environment as much as possible in the intervention; and (c) fostering a long term

258 Henriksen et al.
development focus and following the athletes over an extended period. Measuring
the effects of a sport psychology intervention that follows these recommendations
would be a difcult but very relevant addition to the mental skills training often
seen in such intervention studies.
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