Background: In childhood, sport participation should be a means to promote important factors for lifelong physical activity (PA), such as motor competence (MC) and fitness. Given that girls typically present lower levels of PA compared to boys, the reinforcement of their MC and fitness is imperative. As such, the purpose of this study was to investigate the association of girls' engagement in
... [Show full abstract] sport with their MC and fitness levels and to compare the contribution of different sports to meet this end. Methods: The participants were 220 Greek girls (M age =10.1±1.2 years) regularly engaged in artistic swimming (n=20), rhythmic gymnastics (n=31), artistic gymnastics (n=43), tennis (n=24), Greek traditional dance (n=49), track & field (n=28), and basketball (n=25). The CAMSA (an obstacle-type test encompassing seven motor skills) and the PACER (20m shuttle run), both included in the Greek version of the Canadian Assessment of Physical Literacy-2 (CAPL-2) were used to assess MC and cardiorespiratory fitness (CF), respectively. Separate ANCOVAs were performed to detect potential associations of MC and CF with sport type after controlling for age, while frequency tabulations by sport were produced to classify participants into the CAPL-2 interpretive categories for their MC and CF level (beginning, progressing, achieving, excelling). Results: Several differences between sports were observed in both analyses (p<.05) (track & field and artistic gymnastics corresponded to higher MC and CF scores). Nevertheless, most importantly, only 2.2.% of participants presented sufficient level (achieving/excelling) for MC and less than 50% (46.4%) for CF. Conclusions: It appears that girls' participation in sports can contribute to some extent, to reinforcing their CF; however, its contribution to their MC development is questionable. It seems that sports in Greece implement a sport-specific training that fails to allow for the girls to acquire a wider motor repertoire.
