The purpose of this study was to investigate coaches’ perspectives on the personal development of student-athletes through interuniversity sport participation. More specifically, the ways in which coaches understand and facilitate athletes’ personal development were explored. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with male and female head coaches of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) programs. A qualitative approach, utilizing an inductive analysis of the data revealed: coaches’ difficulty in defining personal development and articulating the ways in which they facilitate opportunities for athletes’ personal development through sport; a lack of clarity of the methods used to measure athletes’ personal development; and the ensuing ramifications of university sport model reviews which are moving towards a high performance model of sport on athletes’ personal development. Findings from this study contribute knowledge and understanding of a previously little studied phenomenon – the personal development of student-athletes – and the perspectives from a relatively un-explored population, university head coaches.

The purpose of this study was to investigate coaches’ perspectives on the personal development of student-athletes through interuniversity sport participation. More specifically, the ways in which coaches understand and facilitate athletes’ personal development were explored. Eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with male and female head coaches of Canadian Interuniversity Sport (CIS) programs. A qualitative approach, utilizing an inductive analysis of the data revealed: coaches’ difficulty in defining personal development and articulating the ways in which they facilitate opportunities for athletes’ personal development through sport; a lack of clarity of the methods used to measure athletes’ personal development; and the ensuing ramifications of university sport model reviews which are moving towards a high performance model of sport on athletes’ personal development. Findings from this study contribute knowledge and understanding of a previously little studied phenomenon – the personal development of student-athletes – and the perspectives from a relatively un-explored population, university head coaches.