This investigation examined the relationship between the superstition endorsement and pre-game anxiety among male and female soccer players at various levels of soccer play. The sample consisted of one hundred-and-one elite soccer players at professional, university, and under 15 year levels. A Soccer Behavior, Beliefs, and Preferences Questionnaire, developed by the investigator, and the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (Martens et al., 1990) were used to assess respectively soccer superstitions and pre-game anxiety. Pearson Correlations, ANOVAs, and t-tests were computed to test the study's hypotheses. A significant relationship was not found between superstition endorsement and pre-game anxiety for the group sampled. Superstitious practices were found to be significantly negatively related to age (r = -.23), teenagers being significantly higher in superstition scores than both professional and varsity groups (H(2,98) = 6.72, p < .05). Although superstition endorsement was not different between the genders at the same levels of play, both under 15 boys and girls were more superstitious than university women. Professional players exhibited significantly more state self-confidence than the teenage group (t(66) = 2.03, p < .05). The under 15 boys were significantly more cognitively anxious than the professional athletes (T(45) = -2.52, p < .05). At these levels of play, superstitious behavior was not in general related in males or females to pre-game anxiety.

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