Young People and Sport

This book highlights the different roles of youth sport, from sport for all and community sport activities to elite sport and international competitions, to suggest significant new directions for youth sport research and practices. The collection addresses a range of prominent management and policy issues associated with the growing interest in research into youth sport. Major youth sport events such as the Youth Olympic Games and the European Youth Olympic Festival are included in this collection as important policy arenas. In addition, the collection addresses a series of under-researched topics including the welfare of young elite athletes, the process of talent identification and development in elite youth disability sport and how young athletes cope with emotional abuse. The contributors to this collection are drawn from a wide range of countries Canada, the United States, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Norway. The book ends with an overview of the state of research into sport-based youth development and highlights trends and gaps in the literature suitable for further research. The chapters were originally published as a special issue in Sport in Society.

Berit Skirstad is an Associate Professor Emerita at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and was responsible for the sport management study there for almost 30 years. Milena M. Parent is a Full Professor in sport (event) management at the University of Ottawa, Canada, and at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences. Barrie Houlihan is Emeritus Professor of Sport Policy at Loughborough University, UK, and Visiting Professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences.

Chapter 1 Young people and sport: from participation to the Olympics - introduction to the special issue Berit Skirstad, Milena M. Parent and Barrie Houlihan Chapter 2 A partnership-based evaluation of a community-based youth sport and physical activity programme Milena M. Parent and Jean Harvey Chapter 3 Reinventing youth sport: formative findings from a state-level action research project Laurence Chalip and Raquel Hutchinson Chapter 4 Walking the line: how young athletes balance academic studies and sport in international competition Elsa Kristiansen Chapter 5 'Everything revolves around gymnastics': athletes and parents make sense of elite youth sport Froukje Smits, Frank Jacobs and Annelies Knoppers Chapter 6 The (un)importance of existing: community sport organizations' environmental negotiation David Patterson and Milena M. Parent Chapter 7 Talent identification and development in elite youth disability sport Barrie Houlihan and Pippa Chapman Chapter 8 'You don't realize what you see!': the institutional context of emotional abuse in elite youth sport Frank Jacobs, Froukje Smits and Annelies Knoppers Chapter 9 Boosting youth sport? Implementation of Norwegian youth sport policy through the 2016 Lillehammer Winter Youth Olympic Games Anna-Maria Strittmatter and Eivind Åsrum Skille Chapter 10 An integrative review of sport-based youth development literature Gareth J. Jones, Michael B. Edwards, Jason N. Bocarro, Kyle S. Bunds and Jordan W. Smith