Athletic performance assessments are important for identifying physical giftedness, monitoring athlete progress and supporting training recommendations. Sprint performance is a key component in athlete success both in athletics and field-based sports, and talent identification testing batteries often include sprint and jump assessments. Jumping and sprinting share a number of similar characteristics and research has shown that the relationships between sprint and jump tests depend on the recorded segment of the sprinting task, type of jump performed, and the speed and sex of the athlete. The majority of this research has been conducted in small, single sex, similar athlete cohorts and there has yet to be an analysis of a large cohorts multi-sport population with both male and female groups. Understanding the relationships between sprint ability and horizontal jump performance, based on large groups of athletes separated by sex can provide great insight into the shared and independent value of sprint and jump performance tests to support athlete testing and development. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to investigate the relationships between horizontal jump tests and sprint performance within different athlete sexes and sprint ability. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study with a large population sample of multisport athletes, with differing sprint and jump abilities. The associations and relationships between horizontal jump performance in standing broad jump (SBJ) and standing triple jump (STJ) with 0-10m and 30-40m sprint time in a group of athletes participating in a talent identification event were investigated in this study. Correlations and linear regressions were assessed with athletes grouped only by sex (male (n = 742), and female (n = 610)), and then grouped by sex and speed (fast = -0.5 SD, slow = +0.5 SD) for both 0-10m and 30-40m time separately. When grouped only by sex there were very large and large associations between sprint and jump measures (r = -0.533 to -0.717), and linear regression equations explained 37.4% to 55.5% of the variance. When grouped by sex and speed, slow athletes showed stronger associations (r = -0.353 to -0.488) than fast athletes (r = -0.088to -0.307). Linear regressions explained 20.3% to 28.5% of the variance in slow athletes, but only up to 12.0% of the variance explained in fast athletes. Linear regressions in slow and fast males all included SBJ as a predictor, but not STJ. Linear regressions in slow and fast females all included STJ as a predictor, but not SBJ. Overall, these results support the use of general sprint and jump tests for slower athletes, the importance of both sprint and jumps tests with higher resolution in faster athletes, as well as the utility of different jump tests to evaluate lower limb performance between sexes. / Graduate

Abstract Talent identification and development are critical and ongoing processes in football, shaping future professional athletes and influencing attrition rates among youth players. This study sought to investigate the multifaceted mechanisms of talent identification and development, drawing on the perspectives of coaches and leaders within the sport. Key objectives included understanding the criteria driving talent identification as well as trying to unwind the existing problems regarding the talent identification process. Data was collected via semi-structured interviews with football professionals operating across various levels of the footballing pyramid. The findings revealed a nuanced approach to talent identification, anchored in four core components: physiological characteristics, psychological resilience, technical skills, and game intelligence. Psychological aspects emerged as the cornerstone of talent identification, with a strong consensus among professionals that player mentality ultimately determines progression to professional football. The study further noted several existing problems with the process of talent identification as we know it today but that gives the professionals a possibility for improvance. The study concludes that talent identification and development go beyond prescriptive criteria, often reflecting the personal experiences and preferences of the coaches and scouts. While this subjectivity can yield benefits, it may also contribute to early dropout rates in the sport. The study underscores the need for continuous professional development for coaches and scouts, as well as the establishment of acknowledged methods and models to foster a more inclusive and equitable talent identification and development process.

Bobsled is an Olympic sport that has progressed from rudimentary in the 1800’s to highly technological replete with biomechanical analyses and investment in engineering from the world’s top engineers. Little to no investigation has been carried out on all the tracks and the interrelationship between various measures of starts and sled-travel down-track. Further, little quality research has been produced in the athletic characteristics required for high-level competition in bobsled. The present manuscript investigates the reliability of, and interrelationship between, start time, start velocity, split times, and finish times in World Cup 2- and 4-man bobsled competition. A strong relationship between the three variables is found, but further research is needed to elucidate the actual effects of the push start on the sled’s travel down-track because of several confounding variables. The present manuscript also investigates the tests commonly performed by the USA Bobsled and Skeleton federation as a means of talent identification and athlete monitoring. Strength and power tests may have more validity for discriminating between higher-level push athletes, so long as a sufficient threshold of running speed is present. Speed tests only discriminate well between lower level push athletes. Recommendations are made for modifying the current testing battery in such a way as to better identify talent and better monitor traveling athletes and informing coaching decisions about athlete preparedness for fast bobsled push starts.

Talent identification and selection, a constant ongoing process in sports worldwide. It’s one of the keyfactors to how children become professional athletes but can also be a factor to why children quit sports.The purpose of this study was to provide knowledge about what is required for talent identification andselection in youth football. The following questions were addressed in the study; How do coaches definetalent and which criteria do they use in the selection process? How well do the coaches understand thecriteria, and in what way do they apply them during the identification process? Are there factors thatdiffer as well as factors that are important for coaches to acknowledge in identification betweenchildren and teens? What is the knowledge regarding Relative Age Effect and how much do coachespay attention to it? This study was done at the request of the Swedish Football Association, through aqualitative method of seven semi structured interviews with football coaches who had experience in therealms of football academies. The results demonstrated that coaches have different perspectives. Fourintegral parts were presented by the respondents which are psychological aspects, physical aspects,technical ability and play intelligence. The standout part was the psychological aspect, where all coachesstated that a player’s mentality decides if they will play professional football or not. The psychologicalaspect was also the one part that differed in the identification process between children and teens. Theability to react well to failure is something that was only observable in teens. Furthermore, the coacheswere all aware of Relative Age Effect and there were different ways of how it affected their organizations,the district teams had the most developed system to work with Relative Age Effect through Future Team.To conclude, talent identification criteria is often based upon the coaches’ own experiences andpreferences, which could be to their benefit but if coaches don’t have the adequate knowledge to handleeach individual talent, it could lead to children quitting sports before they reach their full potential.Coaches will need higher education to make better decisions and to gain a better understanding aboutselection, the challenges that follow but also which possibilities it creates.

The present study sought to identify variables that predicted parental decision-making regarding their child's participation in a national gifted and talented identification program for middle school students and subsequent participation in recommended educational options. One hundred sixty-nine parents of students who qualified for either the 2001-2002 or 2002-2003 Duke Talent Identification Program participated in the study. The students were drawn from two large public school districts and six small private schools in a large metropolitan area in the southwestern United States. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used to identify the variables predictive of parental decision-making regarding talent search participation. Each parent completed a questionnaire consisting of both multiple-choice and open-ended questions. Selected parents participated in structured follow-up interviews. The results of the study indicated that parental perception of the helpfulness of school personnel in explaining the purpose and process of the talent search was most predictive of participation in the talent search. The educational level of the father, parent's prior awareness of the purpose and process of talent search, and the number of enrichment activities in which the child had previously participated were also predictive of talent search participation. Qualitative data indicated that parents of both participants and nonparticipants had a limited understanding of the purpose, diagnostic power, and potential benefits of the talent search. Very few parents chose to seek extracurricular or curricular/instructional options following the talent search testing. Qualitative data indicated that parents did not choose these options due to cost, logistical concerns regarding the special programs, and reservations about the developmental appropriateness of such options for middle school students. Although talent searches are sponsored and administered by organizations outside the local school, this study suggests that parents mostly rely on their local school for notification of their child's nomination, information on the purpose and benefits of talent search, interpretation of test scores, and guidance in selecting appropriate curricular or extracurricular follow-up.

During every summer Olympic Games, the sport of gymnastics rises briefly to the world’s attention as the public admire the incredible skills and feats performed by fit muscular bodies on a range of apparatus. The gymnastics they watch consists of performances in which bodies assemble with apparatus. This thesis utilises an Actor Network Theory (ANT) perspective to follow this assembling of gymnastics in the five codes of competitive gymnastics competed in New Zealand: women’s artistic gymnastics, men’s artistic gymnastics, rhythmic gymnastics, trampolining and competitive aerobics. This thesis is a descriptive ethnography of the world of high performance gymnastics. It begins by examining some of the controversies that have operated to both criticise and rework the sport. Next, the gymnasts are followed through the selection processes that lead them to become members of national squads and teams. It then moves to the training gymnasium and examines the variety of non-human actants that work in the gymnasium to assemble gymnastics. The next two chapters examine how gymnasts are found to enrol and assemble with video technologies and sports science professionals in their efforts to improve performance. Following this, gymnasts are observed to produce a routine at a competition which is translated into a score and ranking through the highly complicated and laborious process of judging. Finally, the thesis concludes with the story of Angela McMillan, New Zealand’s most successful athlete within the gymnastic codes. Throughout are a range of accounts from participants, together with observations, describing attempts to secure the stabilisation of gymnastics as an actor-network that produces internationally successful athletes. All the networks followed involve a continual process of enrolling, un-enrolling, translating and mediating, with power constantly shifting and being shared between various heterogeneous actants including coaches, parents, the national federation and the international federation. At times these networks stabilise with particular actants, such as sports scientists or technologies, being enrolled, while at other times the paths of the networks come to an end as particular assemblages or actants, such as physical ability tests, are no longer enrolled. In contrast to a perception that successful high performance sports include key actors and resources, this thesis shows how the networks that produce high performance gymnasts are highly unpredictable and messy, with humans and non-humans both equally influential in affecting every branch of the networks. Processes such as talent identification, training and judging are found to be complicated and unstable.

[Truncated astract] Talent Identification (TI) in sports begins by mass screening individuals' motor abilities. du Randt (2000) wrote that, as test items from one country might not necessarily suit another, appropriate basic motor skill test items are important for developing a TI mass screening instrument. Three hundred and thirty Malaysian adolescents aged from 12-15 years were tested on three motor skill test batteries: the McCarron Assessment of Neuromuscular Development (MAND, McCarron, 1982); the Australian Talent Identification Test (AIS, Australian Sports Commission, 1998); and a Balance and Movement Coordination Test which was specifically developed for this project. In the current research, the motor performance data recorded from the adolescents underwent several types of analyses. Principal Component analyses were conducted on the MAND, AIS and BMC motor skill instruments to understand what the three motor skill instruments were assessing globally in the Malaysian adolescents. Then, first-order and higher-order factor analyses were conducted on the 13 parameters making up the AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to examine the concept of general motor ability (GMA). After descriptive analyses of the adolescents' motor skill performances, age and gender differences were examined using two (gender) by four (age) ANOVAs. Finally, stepwise discriminant function analyses were conducted on a combined AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to determine the best sub-set of motor skills that reliably classified the Malaysian adolescents into three levels of motor performance.... Two stepwise discriminant analyses were undertaken to find the best set of motor skills for classifying Malaysian adolescents into three motor coordination groups based on scores on the MAND and three motor ability groups derived from scores on the motoric 'g'. The ability of a combined AIS+BMC motor skill instrument to classify Malaysian adolescents into the three groups was good for those classified as Normal, not so great for those adolescents classified as High, and poor for those adolescents classified as Low. The motor skills consistently reported across both sets of analyses were Balance-Eyes-Open, Balance-Eyes-Closed, Dynamic Balance, Hopping Speed, Quadrant Jump, Hopping-in-Square, Basketball Throw and Shuttle-Run-with-Object. Hence, motor skills assessing static balance, dynamic balance and postural control appeared to reliably discriminate the Malaysian adolescents into three motor performance groups. Finally, an examination of the misclassifications found in the discriminant analyses revealed two things. Those individuals being predicted into a lower group performed a large number of the motor skills to a lesser standard when compared with their correctly classified cohorts. Conversely, those predicted into a higher group performed a number of motor skills to a standard higher than their correctly classified cohorts. Thus, at a global level, certain individuals could be overlooked for further athletic development and is a concern when developing a rigorous TI program. Therefore, practitioners need to be cautious of any single ability score, and how that represents an individual's athletic potential. These results are discussed, limitations noted, and directions for future research provided.

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Globally, sport plays a significant role and forms part of every modern person’s life, irrespective of race, age, gender or ethnic group. Researchers on this topic increasingly focus on the early identification of talent and the development of the talent to ensure optimal performance. One of the most critical trademarks of human development is die correlation between age and physical ability. The primary reason why people participate in sport is to improve their level of participation and performance. Therefore every effort should be made to obtain a more scientific approach towards optimal sports performance, seeing that it is scientifically proven that it improves the effectiveness of a specific sport with regards to the selection and preparation of individuals and teams. In present time South African sport is still facing the challenge to successfully integrate previously disadvantaged communities and to select teams purely on merit. The use of scientific evaluation criteria in the selection process of teams can make a definite contribution to help solidify the selection principle of merit only. This is due to the fact that scientifically, assessed physical performance can not merely be ignored or overruled in the selection of teams. The primary objective of this study was first of all to establish whether different norms will be needed for different playing positions in netball and if the assessments that are currently used are able to accurately predict the highest level that players will be able to play at. In the second instance, the objective of this study was to try and determine which components should be part of a set of netball specific evaluation criteria. To accomplish this objective research was done to find many different test protocol and to find literature that would verify the protocol. A third objective was to identify the positional qualities that netball players have to comply to, based on the selected evaluation criteria, and to select the best tests to be used for talent identification. In other words what the minimum test requirements would be to accomplish maximum data gathering. The developed protocol consisted of three (3) motor tests, four (4) physical tests and three (3) kinanthropometrical tests. The research group used in this study consisted of 304 senior netball players i.e. players older than 19 years of age. These players were categorized into three groups, namely players competing at club, national and international level. With the presentation of the statistical analysis, percentile ranks were developed and a 100 research candidates per positional group was used; i.e. 300 netball players in total. Furthermore an ANOVA was used to determine whether there were significant differences between the three positional groups. An analysis was done to determine if the evaluation criteria could discriminate between players from different positional groups. The analysis was merely used as a classification method and did not serve to evaluate die significance of differences. The results delivered position-specific norms. A function for predicting the identification of talented and less talented players was also developed. Although the study showed certain limitations, the research can be utilized to further develop scientific talent identification criteria for netball and this will be to the advantage of sports scientists and coaches involved with netball. / Thesis (DPhil (Human Movement Science))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Biokinetics, Sport and Leisure Sciences / DPhil / unrestricted

The purpose of this bachelor essay was to analyze two Swedish district football associations and how the responsible coaches of the elite youth development teams identify and select talent. Key questions in the thesis were how the coaches described their leadership and their own part in the team, how the coaches identify talent, how they work with the selection process and their opinions about the elite youth development team structure. The study was based on 7 semi-structured interviews. The interviews showed differences between the district football associations but also many similarities in how they selected the team during the talent identification process. All coaches were involved in the selection process but the way they talked about developing elite players varied. One interesting result in the study was that the coaches’ way of describing talent revolved a lot around non-football related attributes such as character and attitude. Nyckelord: