This study aimed to investigate, analyze, and illuminate the perception and experiences of elite male handball players on toxic leadership in sports. The sport handball was chosen as a study object with a phenomenological approach. 9 individual interviews were conducted with 9 different elite male handball players who play in 9 different clubs in Handbollsligan, the top male division in Sweden. The chosen leadership theory was the toxic triangle theory, which entails that there need to be three different dimensions to toxic leadership: the destructive leader, the susceptible followers, and the conducive environment.  The results show that players have experienced toxic leadership. Three different aspects of toxic leadership were found and analyzed in this study. Firstly, destructive leaders exhibit abusive behavior, striving for personal power and manipulating other people within the organization. Secondly, players/followers who obey and conform to the leaders’ actions, experience negative emotions like anxiety, worry, and loss of self-esteem. Thirdly, the conducive environment that enables the leader’s destructive behavior has been discovered to be isolated, had a lack of communication, and was under the total rule of the destructive leader. In summary, this foretells the experiences of elite male handball players with toxic leadership.

The purpose of this study was to determine if NCAA Division I-A football program success had a relationship to student-athlete graduation rates. Graduation rate data for 2001 were obtained from the NCAA and cumulative five-year records of selected NCAA Division I-A football programs determined winning percentage for the years 1996-2000. The data were examined by correlating the two variables of winning percentage and graduation rate. The findings show no significant correlation at a probability level of .05. The results of this study indicate the success of a football programs do not have any relationship to low football team graduation rates. Therefore, other factors such as athletic department ideals, commercialization of sport, or the preconceived notion that collegiate football athletes are only enrolled to compete in football may play a factor in graduation rates among NCAA Division I-A football players.

This thesis explores the available resources and research pertaining to the process of athlete monitoring as well as how this information can be used to build an internet based athlete monitoring system. There is currently no system available that provides proper communication tools while also providing the means to track numerous variables to include strength and conditioning programs, performance testing, competition performance, injuries, therapy, pharmaceuticals, medical procedures, psychological status, and academic standing. The objective of this thesis is twofold. First, is to review the literature and determine the needs of a web based athlete monitoring system. Second, is to provide a business plan that will be used in the process of web development and raising capital. This thesis has identified the needs of a web based athlete monitoring system, a business plan for commercial use has been created, and based upon this business plan web development is currently in progress.

Purpose: To compare muscle architecture variables between sport and sex in competitive athletes, and to compare muscle architecture with performance variables in strong versus weak athletes, and good versus poor jumpers. Methods: The vastus lateralis (VL) and lateral gastrocnemius (LG) muscles of 139 collegiate athletes were collected using ultrasonography to determine muscle thickness (MT), pennation angle (PA), fascicle length (FL), and relative fascicle length (FLrel). Absolute and relative peak power, absolute and relative isometric peak force, and jump height were measured in a subset of baseball and soccer athletes. A 5x2 factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to investigate differences in group means between sex and sport for muscle architecture variables in the larger cohort. A 2x2 factorial ANOVA was used in the in the smaller cohort to investigate differences between strong and weak athletes, and good and poor jumpers. Results: Significant main effects were observed for sex in VL muscle thickness (MT), VL pennation angle (PA), LG MT, and LG fascicle length (FL). Significant main effects were observed for sport in VL MT, VL FL, VL relative fascicle length (FLrel) and LG MT. Significant interaction effects were observed for LG PA and LG FLrel. Muscle architecture profiles were significantly different between strong and weak, and good and poor jumpers in baseball, but not soccer athletes. Soccer athletes had greater PA but smaller FL than baseball athletes. Conclusions: Muscle architecture may play a role in sport selection, undergoes directed adaptation to sport specific training demands, and may differentiate between high and low performers in more anaerobic athletes. Males had greater muscle thickness than females. Patterns of PA and FL values between sport and sex differed between VL and LG. More aerobic athletes such as soccer athletes may have greater VL PA and smaller VL FL than more anaerobic athletes such as baseball athletes.

It has been well documented that female athletes receive much less media attention than male athletes, with estimates placing coverage of male athletes at 95% of all sport-related media (Coakley, 1986). While not to that extent, studies focusing on media portrayals of Olympic athletes also confirm that the media dedicates the majority of coverage to male athletes (Duncan, 1990; Duncan & Hasbrook, 1988; Hambrick, Simmons, Greenhalgh, & Greenwell, 2010; Higgs, Weiller, & Martin, 2003; Lee, 1992; Kinnick, 1998; Pfister, 1978). Some evidence suggests that media coverage of female athletes and the recognition of their achievements are slowly increasing (Higgs et al., 2003; Kinnick, 1998). While the aforementioned studies show many of the same results, no recent research on the subject was found. The majority of past research has focused on summer Olympians specifically, and no studies were found looking at the past five Olympic Games. This study will add to the literature by providing new data to compare to that of previous studies. The author conducted a content analysis, looking at six online media outlets, and selecting 100 athlete profiles. The profiles were coded for any reference to the physical/emotional or strength/weakness characteristics of the athlete. The author analyzed the data using SPSS. Findings show no statistically significant relationships between gender and athlete characteristics, suggesting noticeable improvements in the quality and quantity of media coverage for female athletes when compared to previous studies.

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No description available.

The purpose of this study was to examine seasonal changes in training load (TL), neuromuscular performance, subjective recovery, and stress state, and to investigate the relationships between acute and chronic TL and neuromuscular performance in competitive female soccer players. Nine competitive female soccer players (20.0 ± 1.7 years; 60.3 ± 6.3 kg; 164.0 ± 5.8 cm) completed the Short Recovery and Stress Scale and the countermovement jump (CMJ) with polyvinyl chloride pipe (CMJ0) and 20 kg barbell (CMJ20) at 2-3 h before 1st match (NC), 6th match (NC), 9th match (C), and 15th match (C) of the competitive season. TL included total distance, high-speed running, and PlayerLoad. Acute and chronic TL was calculated by using the average of 2 days (D), 7 days (D), and 21 days (D) prior to four different match play. Significant decreases were found from NC to C in D total distance [ = 0.03, Cohen's effect size (d) = 1.40]. D total distance and PlayerLoad significantly decreased from NC to C and C ( = 0.001-0.01, d = 1.40-1.72). Significant increases were observed from NC to C in CMJ0 jump height ( = 0.03, d = 1.40), ( = 0.021, d = 1.44), and peak power ( = 0.03, d = 1.32). Significant negative correlations were observed for D total distance and CMJ0 jump height ( = 0.02, = 0.79) and peak power ( = 0.03, = 0.71) at C, while significant positive correlations were observed at C for D PlayerLoad and CMJ0 jump height ( = 0.02, = 0.80). Polyvinyl chloride pipe CMJ0) jump height and peak power may increase from preseason to the midcompetitive season. Seasonal variations may affect the relationships between D TL and CMJ0 performance.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the level of agreement in measuring back squat kinematics between an inertial measurement unit (IMU) and a 3D motion capture system (3DMOCAP). Kinematic variables included concentric peak velocity (CPV), concentric mean velocity (CMV), eccentric peak velocity (EPV), eccentric mean velocity (EMV), mean propulsive velocity (MPV), and POP-100: a proprietary variable. Sixteen resistance-trained males performed an incrementally loaded one repetition maximum (1RM) squat protocol. A series of Pearson correlations, 2 × 4 RM ANOVA, Cohen's effect size differences, coefficient of variation (CV), and standard error of the estimate (SEE) were calculated. A large relationship existed for all variables between devices ( 0.78-0.95). Between-device agreement for CPV worsened beyond 60% 1RM. The remaining variables were in agreement between devices with trivial effect size differences and similar CV magnitudes. These results support the use of the IMU, regardless of relative intensity, when measuring EMV, EPV, MPV, and POP-100. However, practitioners should carefully select kinematic variables of interest when using the present IMU device for velocity-based training (VBT), as certain measurements (e.g., CMV, CPV) do not possess practically acceptable reliability or accuracy. Finally, the IMU device exhibited considerable practical data collection concerns, as one participant was completely excluded and 13% of the remaining attempts displayed obvious internal error.

INTRODUCTION: An increase in participation in females sports has created an increase of female athletes at risk for injuring their Anterior Cruciate Ligament(ACL)[12,21,29,44]. Traditional jumping sports have the highest rate of non contact ACL injuries, due to the use of movements of cutting, pivoting and landing on one foot[5,8,32,33,38]. ACL injuries can also be attributed to neuromuscular deficits such as the ‘Ligament Dominance Theory’, ‘Quadricep Dominance Theory’, ‘Trunk Dominance Theory’ and the ‘Leg Dominance Theory’[24,33]. The neuromuscular deficits are muscle strength, power or activation patterns that can cause an individual to have an increased risk of ACL injury[33]. Female traditional jumping sport athletes have been associated with being at a higher risk of ACL injury than their male counterparts due to anatomical, hormonal and neuromuscular differences[2,8,24,28,32,37,38,44,47]. However, female dancers trained with ballet have a lower risk of ACL injury than their female athlete counterparts, but also have a similar ACL injury to their male dancing counterparts [28,37,45,47]. METHODS: This study analyzed six papers that compared the lower body biomechanics of female traditional jumping sport athletes to female dancers trained in ballet. The results of the measurement of this study will be placed into a chart to compare the results of each study to each other, to confirm the results of the comparison between the two populations. The next part of this study will examine unused turnout angle data collected from a previous thesis performed by Ashley Tornio. The data was taken from 20 participants, 15 female traditional jumping sport athletes and 5 female dancers trained in ballet. The averages of these two groups will be compared using an f test to determine differences in the turnout capabilities of each group. RESULTS: The results of the data comparison found only six comparable measurements between the 6 papers. The papers were in agreement that female traditional jumping sport athlete had greater hip adduction moments and trunk forward flexion than female dancers trained in ballet. The papers were also in agreement that there was no statistically significant difference in the knee stiffness between the two populations. There was no consensus for the results of knee valgus angle, knee rotation, muscle activation or leg stiffness between the six papers. For the turnout angle f test, female traditional jumping sport athletes had an average turnout angle of 120.5 degrees and the female dancers trained in ballet had an average turnout angle of 141.2 degrees. It was found that the there was no statistically significant difference between the two populations at the 95% confidence level. However, there was a statistically significant difference between the two populations average turnout at a reduced confidence level of 80%. The DISCUSSION: The limiting number of studies which compare female traditional jumping sport athletes and female dancers trained in ballet, were unable to form consensus on the difference between the biomechanics of each group during a landing task. The turnout angle data was also limited in the number of participants and a valid conclusion was unable to be made determining the ability to use the turnout angle as an indicator for risk of ACL injury. There needs to be continued research on the comparison of the female traditional jumping sport athletes and female dancers trained in ballet to determine the biomechanical advantages female dancers have for protection of the ACL.