2021 Archives - Page 2 of 2 - The Sport Information Resource Centre

Highlights

At its core, the Safe Sport movement is about optimizing the sport experience for all—athletes, coaches, sport administrators, officials, support staff, and others in the sport environment.
Broader societal changes have influenced the Safe Sport movement:
- Changing approaches to child and youth development
- The #MeToo/Time’s Up movements
- Increased attention to equity, diversity, and inclusion
- Highly publicized cases of athlete maltreatment
For sport leaders, understanding the process of change (i.e., denial, resistance, exploration, and commitment) can be useful to successfully embedding Safe Sport practices within their sport.

This article addresses the next steps in the Safe Sport journey; specifically, how to move from a focus on prevention of harms to a focus on optimizing the sport experience for athletes and sport leaders alike. This journey involves a cultural change in sport—one that challenges some traditionally accepted assumptions and practices and encourages the adoption of new methods. Building on my work with National Sport Organizations (NSOs), this article has three aims:

To show that Safe Sport extends beyond the prevention of harms to the optimization of sport experiences;
To highlight some of the broader societal influences on Safe Sport, which are also affecting other sectors in Canada and abroad;
To address some of the common concerns and questions about Safe Sport.

Designed to be helpful for sport leaders—administrators, coaches, officials, and support staff—as well as athletes, this article will begin with the defining characteristics of Safe Sport, then move to the broader societal influences on sport, and will conclude by addressing some common questions posed about Safe Sport.

Safe Sport is More than Prevention of Harms

At its core, the Safe Sport movement is about optimizing the sport experience for all—athletes, coaches, sport administrators, officials, support staff, and others in the sport environment. To optimize the experience, stakeholders should have the reasonable expectation that the sport environment will not only be free from all forms of maltreatment (i.e., abuse, neglect, bullying, harassment, and discrimination), but that it will also be accessible, safe, welcoming, and inclusive; will contribute to wellbeing; be enjoyable and respectful of personal goals; and provide a sense of achievement. This is true for athletes and sport leaders, alike.

The Coaching Association of Canada (2020) reflects this perspective in its definition of Safe Sport: “Our collective responsibility is to create, foster and preserve sport environments that ensure positive, healthy and fulfilling experiences for all individuals. A safe sport environment is one in which all sport stakeholders recognize and report acts of maltreatment and prioritize the welfare, safety and rights of every person at all times.” When the priority is optimizing the sport environment, the prevention of maltreatment or harms becomes a natural by-product.

Reflection: When sport is safe, welcoming, inclusive, and fulfilling, and is respectful of individuals’ rights and welfare, prevention of harms occurs naturally.

A question that often arises in discussions about Safe Sport is “what about performance outcomes?” For sport to be a fulfilling experience, individuals, including athletes and sport leaders, must feel a sense of achievement. Athletic results remain important in Safe Sport; the focus, however, is on healthy, safe, and inclusive methods of achieving performance results. More will be said about this later in the article.

Figure 1: Characteristics of Safe Sport

A Cultural Shift

In many ways, Safe Sport has stimulated a cultural change. Some previously accepted practices, such as having coaches share hotel rooms with athletes to save costs, is no longer acceptable. Similarly, for decades, practices such as using exercise as punishment were simply an accepted part of sport; but now, we know more about the problems associated with using punishment, and even more importantly, we know that disciplinary strategies are far more effective (Nelsen, 2011). Among others, these changes have required all of us in sport to adapt and learn new strategies and ways of interacting with one another. In some ways, these calls for new ways of doing things are part of the long history of cultural changes in sport to make sport more equitable, inclusive and safe. It was not that long ago that women were permitted to run the marathon or that criminal prosecutions were introduced for violence in sport. Historically, we’ve seen enhanced protection of the health and safety of athletes through the introduction of mandatory protective gear in many sports, changes in rules and eligibility requirements, and return-to-play concussion protocols. Sport has continuously evolved to protect the safety, wellbeing, and rights of participants—and the Safe Sport movement is a key part of this trajectory of cultural change.

Influences on the Safe Sport Movement: A Focus on Human Rights

The Safe Sport movement has been influenced by broader societal changes, especially the heightened attention to the rights of children and youth, women, and other equity-seeking groups. It is true that norms, standards, and expectations for sport leaders’ conduct have changed. This is also true of others in positions of power and authority in Canadian society, from teachers, doctors, and lawyers to those in business and politics—even parents. And, that’s a good thing! It’s a good thing that teachers no longer physically strike children or that employers can no longer sexually harass employees without consequence. Society expects those in sport to align norms and practices with those in other sectors that involve young people.

1. Changes in Approaches to Child, Youth, and Emerging Adult Development

In Canada, childhood and adolescence are viewed as critical stages of life because experiences during these years influence later health, wellbeing, and developmental outcomes. As a result, both parenting and education have shifted to emphasizing child/youth-centred approaches. These approaches do not mean that the adults in positions of power and authority give up control or hand over decision-making to the younger person. But, it does mean that these adults base their decisions and actions on the rights and developmental needs of the younger person. As an example, developing a sense of competence (i.e., feeling proficient or “good” at something) is very important for those in middle and late childhood years (approximately 7- to 11-years-old) (Erikson, 1968). For a coach, this translates into ensuring children feel good about themselves by encouraging and praising them for their performance of an athletic task, or for their attitudes, effort or sportspersonship. Children who receive little or no encouragement and praise from coaches may struggle to develop this sense of competence, leaving them with less self-confidence, a reluctance to try new things, less enjoyment, and therefore less likelihood of continuing with sport.

For sport leaders, a person-centred approach also extends to athletes over the age of 18 years. The age group of 18- to 24-years-old, historically considered adulthood, is now considered “emerging adulthood” (Arnett, 2000). By virtue of extended periods of education, and delays in ages of financial independence, marriage, and child-bearing, this new age group is considered a key developmental period influenced by adults in positions of power and influence. Importantly, as many high performance athletes are within this age group, coaches retain significant influence on the athlete’s health, and on the development of that athlete in sport and as a person. While the coach maintains a position of power and authority over athletes in this age group, a person- or athlete-centred approach that engages athletes in decisions that affect them would be developmentally appropriate.

2. #MeToo/Time’s Up Movements

The #MeToo and Time’s Up movements have permeated virtually every sector of Canadian society, including business, industry, politics, education, and of course, sport. Although the focus of both movements is sexual harassment and abuse, at their foundation is a push for the right to be physically and psychologically safe. This requires a change in the ways power is used. No longer is it acceptable or tolerable for people in positions of power and authority to use these positions to harass, threaten, exploit or otherwise take advantage of others. These movements have provided clarity about how power should and should not be used and have raised the bar for acceptable behaviours. Safe Sport encompasses the rights for everyone to experience physical and psychological safety in the sport environment, calling for power to be used in positive ways.

3. Increased Attention to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Canadian organizations, including those in sport, have been challenged to reflect on advancing equity, diversity, and inclusion. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and Black Lives Matter, as two examples, have heightened our awareness of historic and persisting systemic oppression and discrimination that translate into the denial of rights. The same can be said of gender and sexually diverse individuals, new Canadians, and Canadians with a disability. Safe Sport, which includes a focus on preventing and addressing discrimination, aims to advance respect of human rights and our practices of inclusion.

4. High-Profile Cases of Athlete Maltreatment

Highly publicized cases of athlete maltreatment, in Canada and internationally, have also increased awareness of the need for Safe Sport. The public eye is on sport with clear expectations to “do better” to prevent and address athlete maltreatment. In the past few years, the sport community has devoted significant time, energy, careful thought, and financial resources to developing measures to address this problem. Some of these changes were stimulated by the support of the former Minister of Science and Sport, Kirsty Duncan, who made the eradication of athlete maltreatment a priority and claimed that “a systemic culture shift is required to eliminate maltreatment, including sexual, emotional, and physical abuse, neglect, harassment, bullying, exploitation and discrimination” (Canadian Heritage, 2019). Since then, initiatives such as the creation of the Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS) and the Coaching Association of Canada’s Safe Sport Training have been implemented to advance Safe Sport.

Figure 2: Broader Societal Influences on Sport

Adapting to Change

Whenever broad-based changes are introduced in a society, sector, or an organization, a range of responses can be anticipated, including anxiety and uncertainty, resistance, reluctance, tensions, backlash, acceptance and commitment. (We have observed this recently during the pandemic with various and evolving responses to public health standards for physical distancing, mask-wearing and vaccinations.) With respect to Safe Sport, it’s helpful for leaders to understand the process of change and associated emotions to help others better adapt to the Safe Sport journey. Below are the psychological Stages of Change (Scott & Jaffe, 1988) that are common when individuals are confronted with significant calls for change.

Figure 3: Stages of Change

These Stages of Change are relevant to Safe Sport. The pursuit of Safe Sport is a journey characterized by challenges to long-held assumptions and practices, new learnings and calls to adapt one’s behaviours. While some individuals are already in the commitment stage and have been using Safe Sport practices all along, for others, denial and resistance may exist.

To help sport stakeholders move through this process of change, it is important to understand and address concerns, questions, doubts, and potential reasons for resistance. The next section will address some of the common questions sport stakeholders have asked about Safe Sport.

Addressing Common Questions about Safe Sport

Why do practices need to change if they have worked in the past to produce podium finishers?

For some individuals, the response to calls for changes to traditionally accepted or “old school” sport practices may arouse reactions of denial like “I don’t have to change.” This may be especially true of those who have produced successful athletes: “My athletes were podium finishers so my practices obviously worked.”

Yes, “old school” methods can work if “working” means putting athletes on the podium—but at what cost? Aggressive, berating, punishing coaches’ practices were at one time accepted as part of tough coaching, but today this conduct may be deemed as emotionally abusive (Stirling & Kerr, 2008). These behaviours are viewed differently now because research evidence shows the detrimental short- and long-term harmful effects of these behaviours on athlete’s mental health and wellbeing (Kerr et al., 2020; Stirling & Kerr, 2013; Vertommen et al., 2016). In addition, these practices run contrary to the huge body of research on how people best learn and grow. Finally, young athletes who experience these behaviours are more likely to leave sport (Battaglia et al., 2021; 2020, 2017), thus harming sport’s reputation, depriving young people of opportunities to grow and develop, and reducing Canada’s talent pool. Getting through the denial phase involves letting go of some “old” practices and assumptions.

Does Safe Sport mean that coaches need to be “soft” on athletes?

Optimal athletic performances (at all levels of sport) require athletes to move out of their comfort zones and sometimes this means the coach needs to encourage the athletes to do so. Safe Sport does not mean that coaches cannot encourage athletes to move outside of their comfort zones. But, what it does do is stimulate reflection on whether the coach takes control and ‘pushes’ the athlete, or leaves responsibility with the athlete by ‘encouraging’ the athlete. Safe Sport also means that practices to encourage athletes to train harder (e.g., do another rep or another skill in spite of fatigue or soreness) are safe, physically and psychologically, and evidence-informed. Coaches can be demanding and firm, and hold high expectations, without engaging in abusive behaviours.

Does Safe Sport mean that coaches cannot develop a close relationship with their athletes?

Safe Sport does not mean that coaches cannot develop a close, trusting relationship with their athletes. In fact, research on achieving optimal athletic performance cites the importance of have a close, trusting coach-athlete relationship (Jowett, 2017). From a Safe Sport perspective, such relationships can and should occur for wellbeing and optimal performance, but that relationship boundaries need to be maintained, and interactions, to the extent possible, should occur in public.

How will Safe Sport practices affect medal counts on the world stage? Safe Sport may work at lower levels of sport but not at the high-performance level.

The most commonly reported behaviours of maltreatment are harsh personal criticisms; statements that are threatening, belittling, or degrading; body shaming; the use of exercise as punishment; and sexist jokes and remarks (Kerr, Willson, & Stirling, 2019). There is no evidence that these behaviours produce optimal athletic performance. However, there is evidence that these practices lead to drop out from sport (Battaglia et al., 2021; 2020, 2017), thus reducing our talent pool. There is also evidence that these practices lead to mental health challenges such as anxiety, depression, and eating disorders among athletes (Kerr et al., 2020; Stirling & Kerr, 2013; Vertommen et al., 2016), none of which assist with sport performance. Finally, these harmful practices run contrary to everything we know about how people best learn and are motivated (Deci & Ryan, 2008). Safe Sport and performance outcomes are not at odds with one another.

Reflection: When do any of us perform at our best—in our relationships, in our jobs, in our parenting? When we feel good about ourselves. When we feel competent, and when we feel supported. The same is true for performance in sport.

Doesn’t Safe Sport open the door for athletes and parents to complain about abuse when athletes are not selected to teams or when they receive less playing time?

Making decisions, sometimes unpopular decisions, such as de-selection, are fundamental to the work of sport leaders. As long as the criteria for making these decisions are transparent and known to those affected in advance, decisions adhere to these criteria, and the decisions are communicated in a respectful manner, those at the receiving end have no grounds for claiming abuse. The Safe Sport approach encourages sport leaders to use their positions of power in respectful ways but does not preclude leaders from making the decisions for which they are responsible.

How can sport leaders apply consequences to athletes without being accused of abuse?

Safe Sport enables sport leaders to apply consequences for inappropriate conduct while encouraging respectful ways of doing it. Outside of sport, in parenting and education for example, the use of positive discipline and natural consequences have replaced the use of punishments for behaviours that don’t meet expectations (Nelsen, 2011). Positive discipline refers to teaching and guiding athletes by letting them know what behaviour is acceptable, helping them understand why behaving in an acceptable manner is important, and articulating how to achieve the acceptable behaviour. For example, a coach may communicate the expectation that a team curfew is in place, that curfews are important because they help to ensure athletes are rested and prepared for the next day’s training/competition, and that to meet curfew they’ll need to leave the appropriate amount of time to return to where the team is staying. Positive discipline is preferred over punishment because it teaches self-control, a sense of responsibility, builds a sense of competence and self-confidence, and maintains the integrity of relationships.

So, what do you do when rules are breached or conduct is unacceptable? Natural consequences are now favoured instead of punishments. Natural consequences are those things that happen in response to behaviour that are imposed by nature, society, or another person. Examples of natural consequences include getting cold hands in the winter when we don’t wear mitts, a child failing a test because they chose not to study, or receiving a speeding ticket when we drive too fast. These natural consequences encourage compliance with normative, expected conduct. In the example above, if the athletes know in advance that missing curfew is associated with not playing in the next day’s game, not being played in the next day’s game is a natural consequence. The benefits of using natural consequences is that decision-making remains with the athlete, they teach self-control and a sense of responsibility, and maintain the integrity of the relationship between athletes and coaches.

Reflection: We often refer to the benefits that young people glean from sport, including skills and competencies that will assist them later in life (e.g., self-responsibility, self-control, decision-making, perseverance). Using evidence-informed practices such as athlete-centred approaches, positive discipline, and natural consequences assist us in teaching life skills.

With all of this attention on athlete maltreatment, how can we avoid creating a culture of fear?

We must remember that far too many Canadian athletes have lived in fear for far too long. There is no shortage of accounts of athletes being afraid to speak up, afraid to have a voice, and not disclosing or reporting their experiences of maltreatment. We must create a safer environment for athletes, and in the process of doing so, we must not create an unsafe environment for other stakeholders. Achieving both will require clear communication and a shared understanding of expected conduct, maintenance of relationship boundaries, and help in adapting to new ways of doing things. This is one reason why training and education are so important. All sport stakeholders need to learn about expected conduct and standards for behaviour and if we adhere to these, we’re far less likely to be the recipient of a complaint. The best thing we can do to prevent a culture of fear is to create physically and psychologically safe environments that are welcoming, inclusive, and rights-based.

Why is the focus of Safe Sport on everyone instead of only those who have behaved inappropriately?

The vast majority of sport leaders are not abusers, but Safe Sport is important for all leaders for several reasons. First, leaders may observe or hear about experiences of maltreatment. By virtue of being in a position of power and authority as leaders, there is a responsibility to care for the wellbeing of young people and each other, and in some circumstances, there is a duty to report abuse to the authorities. It is therefore important to know what behaviours constitute maltreatment, how to intervene as a bystander, and when there is a duty to report. Learning more about Safe Sport also enables us to better support one another in adapting to culture changes. All of us in sport have a collective responsibility to create and ensure safe sport environments.

Next Steps in the Safe Sport Journey

In recent years, the national sport community in Canada has responded to the high-profile cases of athlete abuses with the development of the UCCMS and associated Safe Sport training offered by CAC and others. These are critical steps as members of the sport community need to know which behaviours are prohibited and which practices, even if historically accepted, need to be replaced.

However, the next step in the Safe Sport journey is equally important. The UCCMS stipulates ‘what not to do’ but does not address ‘what to do.’ Coaches have often been heard saying “I get that I can’t do XX anymore, but what do I replace it with?” or “If I can’t use these practices, what do I use instead?” These are legitimate questions and education on evidence-based practices will be particularly important in the coming years to help members of the community comply with Safe Sport expectations, and to maximize sport experiences for athletes and sport leaders alike. These are some of the challenges that lie ahead for the Safe Sport movement.

In summary, Safe Sport serves as a reminder of the potential and promise of sport to contribute in positive and important ways to the overall health, learning, and development of individual participants and the public good. With a focus on the provision of safe, inclusive, welcoming environments that respect individual rights and welfare for all, harms will be prevented, more participants (athletes, coaches, officials, etc.) will remain in sport, and athletic performance will improve. Safe Sport has necessitated changes to traditionally accepted assumptions and practices, particularly with respect to the development of athletic talent. This process of change, which other sectors of society are also experiencing, can cause uncertainty, anxiety, and resistance. The keys to bringing people along this journey are to reinforce the goals and vision of Safe Sport and provide education and support to make the needed changes. By doing so, all stakeholders in sport will benefit. The public expects this of sport!

Highlights

Both indoor and outdoor sports are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, from heat waves and diminishing amounts of snow to disruptions in supply chains.
As a first step to prepare for and adapt to the effects of climate change, engage board members and staff in intentional discussions about the climate hazards that may affect your sport.
To increase adaptive capacity, start with the soft infrastructure items (e.g., writing new policies, building awareness about climate risks among staff) and work your way up to the costlier ‘hard’ infrastructure development (e.g., infrastructural upgrades).
Sport organizations can use the Sport for Climate Action Framework as a tool to orient thinking around mitigating climate change through climate action and advocacy.

According to the United Nations, climate change is the defining issue of our time, and we are at a defining moment. In Canada, a national climate emergency was declared by the House of Commons based on the revelation in a 2019 federal climate report that our country is warming roughly twice as fast as others. While infrastructure, livelihoods, and health are top of mind with regard to climate change, all sectors will be impacted.

Sport is not immune to the impacts of climate change. In January 2020, the world watched in horror as Australia’s bushfires raged and athletes at the Australian Open collapsed from heat exhaustion under orange skies, their shoes melting onto the searing court. In Europe, unprecedented heat waves loomed over the 2019 Women’s FIFA World Cup. Here in Canada, forest fires in the west have compromised air quality, keeping many athletes indoors. And of course, winter is getting shorter and the amount of snow has been diminishing since the mid-twentieth century. Climate change isn’t going away; it’s only getting worse.

The purpose of this article is to introduce climate change as an important consideration for strategic sport management for the future. The first section discusses the risks, and how sports organizations can prepare and adapt to climate change to minimize losses and disruptions. In the second section, the Sport for Climate Action Framework is introduced as a tool to orient thinking around mitigating climate change through climate action and advocacy.

Coping with climate change

Vulnerability to climate change is the degree to which an entity—such as a person, an organization, a building, or a community—is at risk of experiencing negative outcomes from climate change, such as warmer weather, droughts, fires, floods, and storms (IPCC, 2018).

The United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR, 2004) provides a framework to assess vulnerability based on three key factors:

Exposure – how likely is X to happen?
Sensitivity – how bad would it be if X happened?
Adaptive capacity – how ready is the entity to cope with X, with minimal disruption or losses?

Some sports are more vulnerable to climate change than others. Outdoor sports and those heavily reliant on natural resources are most at risk of experiencing setbacks due to climate change. This includes sports such as swimming or indoor hockey for their heavy reliance on water. Winter sports are on particularly thin ice (pun intended). For example, research from the University of Waterloo suggests all ski resorts in Ontario and some in Quebec could be faced with winters too short to remain economically viable within 50-60 years if current emissions trends are not curbed (Scott, Steiger, Knowles & Young, 2015). Likewise, research on outdoor skating in Toronto revealed that the number of skateable days has fallen by 25% since the late 1950s (Malik, McLeman, Robertson & Lawrence, 2020) and is projected to fall another 33% by the year 2090 (Robertson, McLeman & Lawrence, 2015).

For summer sports, heat waves and air quality are the key challenges (more on that below). While somewhat insulated, indoor sports can also be vulnerable to climate change. For example, supply chains can be compromised or slowed; travel to-and-from practices and games can be impacted; and poor air quality can seep into indoor areas, rendering them unsafe.

Identifying the risks

The first and most important step in adapting to climate change is to identify and learn about the potential hazards. This process should be intentional and ongoing, starting at the top. Climate hazards should be regularly discussed by the board of directors and staff should be encouraged to read up about what is currently happening (heat waves, storms, wildfires, etc.) and what will likely change in future due to climate change. Together, an informed leadership and staff team can engage in meaningful climate adaptation efforts. Many free resources exist to support this type of fact-finding and future thinking: perusing the Climate Atlas of Canada is a good place to start.

Once the climate hazards that may affect your sport have been identified, organizations can take action to proactively increase adaptive capacity.

Opportunities to adapt

Sport leaders cannot control climate change, but they can control organizations’ adaptive capacity. The good news is that most adaptive measures are relatively simple and inexpensive. Start with the soft infrastructure items (e.g., writing new policies, building awareness about climate risks among staff), and work your way up to the costlier ‘hard’ infrastructure development (e.g., infrastructural upgrades).

Developing weather policies

Weather policies, such as heat policies, lightning policies, and air quality policies, codify safe conditions of play. Typically, these include thresholds for what is considered safe, and a pre-determined action at each threshold. The specifics of these policies will differ based on the sport and available facilities. For instance, at X temperature, an extra water break is added, or at X air quality index rating, practices and games must be moved indoors or postponed. Table 1 offers the Korey Stringer Institute’s latest heat-related guidance for outdoor sports. Already, most sport organizations in Canada have a lightning policy that calls for delaying play when lightning strikes nearby.

Weather policies allow coaches and other decision-makers to act quickly when necessary, alleviating any on-the-spot stress of decision-making or deciding on a best course of action. If the polices are already there, the adaptations can be quick when the hazards arise.

Table 1: Suggested heat policy guidelines for football and outdoor sports (Korey Stringer Institute, 2018).

Notes: The categories are based on geographical regions in the United States (Grundstein et al. 2015). Most of Canada falls into Category 1, with a few small pockets in Southern Ontario in Category 2. The original version of this table was written in Fahrenheit; conversion to Celsius was done by the author. WBGT represents the WetBulb Globe Temperature.

The sport of soccer is ahead of the curve on this: Major League Soccer is the only major sport league to have a heat policy. In Canada, Alberta Soccer has an air quality policy which requires officials and coaches to reduce the intensity of play, reduce the duration of practices, provide more rest breaks, or reschedule altogether, depending on the level of pollution in the air.

Strategic partnerships

Space-sharing partnerships can provide organizations with access to alternative facilities to reduce the impact of inclement weather. During focus groups I conducted with Australian and British sport leaders in the fall of 2020, a few possible suggestions emerged. For example, a tennis club manager proposed partnering with a local basketball club to share space so tennis players could use the gym to do an indoor workout when weather conditions were poor, and basketball players could get outside to cross-train or use the courts for group workouts.

Resource- and information-sharing partnerships are another option for adaptation. For example, sport organizations could co-invest in weather radar technologies that would provide managers and coaches more information than what’s available on the weather channel. Alternatively, sport organizations could share the costs of a consultation with a climate expert or sport scientist to help develop weather policies.

There are also several groups across the country that support sport leaders in understanding and responding to climate change. Most notably, the Canadian alliance of signatories to the Sport for Climate Action Framework support regular meetings and best-practice sharing amongst organizations such as the Canada Games, the Canadian Olympic Committee, the World Masters Athletics event, and others. The alliance also convenes researchers working in the climate and sport space to help guide sustainability strategies and climate adaptation efforts. Community, provincial/territorial and national sport organizations can also leverage their positions as influencers and information clearinghouses to distribute best-practice guidance.

Follow municipal leadership

Most municipalities across Canada, from Victoria to Toronto to St. John’s, have a climate adaptation plan that outlines the steps cities are taking now to prevent climate problems in future. These include, for example, adding bike lanes, electrifying public transit, sourcing green energy, and preparing storm drains for heavier rainfall. Those municipalities that do not have a plan default to their provincial/territorial plans. These plans are often complemented by funding and subsidy opportunities. For example, Montreal is committed to increasing green space and sun shade, so Montreal-based sport organizations might apply for municipal funding to add shading (e.g. trees, partially-covered shelters) to their outdoor fields as a sun and heat-safety strategy.

Build in flexibility for multi-use spaces

In the face of climate change, creativity and flexibility will be paramount. Be ready to pivot from outdoor training sessions to indoor training sessions, saving time and headaches when the weather does not cooperate. If you are a winter sport, or a sport with stricter climate demands, develop your facility’s summer activities. Ski resorts across the country are leading innovation in this area, but more can be done. Turn outdoor arena space into a summer ball hockey facility, or promote downhill ski resorts as trail running and hiking destinations.

Infrastructure and equipment upgrades

Air handlers and air purifying systems can keep wildfire smoke in the building to a minimum, but they are expensive. Adding shaded areas to an outdoor sports facility (from roofs on baseball dugouts to new trees along the edges of fields) can go a long way in protecting athletes and spectators from heat-related illnesses. Adding natural ditches and water drainage on the site can alleviate the risks of flooding. In the most extreme case, enclosing an outdoor facility can provide for climate-controlled conditions indoors and limits exposure to the elements.

The Sport for Climate Action Framework

Coping with climate change is one thing. Mitigating future change is another.

Sport has significant potential to serve as a vehicle for climate action. Many reputable organizations agree (the United Nations, the Obama Administration, the International Olympic Committee). This can be done in two ways: by reducing the environmental footprint of the sport sector, and by increasing the sector’s “brainprint”—the amount of attention and awareness the sector draws to climate issues and sustainability.

These two overarching goals are well represented in the Sport for Climate Action Framework, the UN’s latest effort to drive climate action in sport. The Framework includes five principles to guide this effort:

Principle 1: Undertaking systematic efforts to promote greater environmental responsibility

A systematic effort to promote greater environmental responsibility must infiltrate every level of the organization from the c-suite to the volunteers. Complement aspirational long-term goals (e.g., Seattle Kraken’s climate pledge arena is aiming for carbon neutrality; so is the Paris 2024 Olympics) with short-term, actionable goals that can provide early wins (e.g., reducing paper use, implementing recycling and composting programs). In the same way sports organizations envision the ‘Road to Rio’ or to another major event, with several small but important steps on route to a bigger goal, a ‘Road to Zero’ can be envisioned.

Principle 2: Reduce overall climate impact

The biggest challenge to reduce the overall climate impact of the sport sector is reducing emissions associated with travel to-and-from practices, games, and competitions. Travel represents upwards of 80% of overall emissions in sport, at every level from grassroots clubs to the elite professional leagues (Dolf & Teehan, 2015; Dolf, 2017; Wesström, 2016). Research suggests active sport participants have an average annual carbon footprint of 844 kg of carbon dioxide-equivalent emission (Wicker, 2019). These emissions can be addressed by encouraging athlete and participants to take public transit or cycle, or by changing competition schedules to limit long-distance travel (e.g., by holding the round-robin rounds of provincial and national competitions regionally, and having only the top four teams travel for the semi-finals and finals). Table 2 provides strategies for sport facilities to reduce their climate impact.

Table 2: Menu of Opportunities to Reduce Overall Carbon Footprint

Principle 3: Educate for climate action

Publicly declare your organization or team’s commitment to climate action and environmental stewardship. Explain what actions are being taken to reduce the organization’s footprint, and the goals for future action. Invite participants and fans to be part of the greening process by sharing regular updates and identifying ways for them to support the process. For example, the Banff Marathon, dubbed the “World’s Greenest Marathon,” has a webpage dedicated to sharing their sustainability efforts, and showcases their efforts at the event. Scotiabank Arena in Toronto has a similar page on their website, describing their strategies to reduce the facility’s environmental footprint.

Principle 4: Promoting sustainable and responsible consumption

This principle is linked to education and reducing overall impact. Consumption by sport organizations includes all procurement, sourcing, and staffing. Decision-makers can consider the following hierarchy of sustainable sourcing practices (from most to least effective):

RETHINK how you view natural resources and our relationship to the natural environment. Apply the “leave no trace” philosophy. If a material or item will have a damaging impact, such as a harmful pesticide to maintain a field, or single-use plastic cups for water, consider using less of the product or choosing an alternative.
REFUSE to accept or support companies, events, products, and ideas that harm the natural environment or the people who inhabit it (this includes refusing to support racism, sexism, homophobia and transphobia, and other harmful belief and behavior systems).
REMOVE items you don’t need. Declutter. Simplify. For instance, can extra swag or brochures be cut from next year’s procurement plan?
REDUCE the amount you order, of everything. Do you need ten soccer balls, or will six suffice? Consider strategies to reduce the use of office supplies.
REPLACE suppliers and partners that do not meet your organization’s standards for sustainability. Often, when suppliers, sponsors, or partners are presented with the opportunity to improve something to align more closely with your sustainable values, they will. For example, ask suppliers to use less packaging (no single-wrapped t-shirts or pieces of equipment), or encourage sponsors to share and promote their sustainability work through the sponsorship.
REUSE whatever you can. Last year’s leftover volunteer t-shirts will work just fine this year (pro tip: avoid including the year on event materials for recurring events, so signage, t-shirts, and marketing materials can be reused).
RECYCLE paper, electronics, plastics, metals, and whatever your city or town can accept. Put up signs around your facility to encourage visitors and staff to follow your lead. Where possible, implement composting.!
RETURN anything you can. Choose to rent or borrow, rather than buying equipment that will sit idle for long periods of time.

Consumption by sport participants and spectators includes the way they engage with and consume your product. Make it easy for them to be sustainable in their sport participation (e.g., go all-digital with communications and forms) and invite them to share their at-home sustainable practices with the team or group!

Principle 5: Advocate for climate action through communication

This is related to climate education but demands one extra step: advocacy. It is not enough to wish and hope for a better planet; we all have a role to play in stepping up and speaking out to advocate for a healthy and safe environment. One tactic for climate advocacy is to use the power of athletes as communicators to liaise with spectators and participants. Sport organizations can align with non-profit organizations such as Protect Our Winter Canada, EcoAthletes, Players for the Planet, and Champions for the Earth to access training and resources to educate athletes, and leverage athletes’ platforms for climate advocacy.

Conclusion

In sport, we are accustomed to chasing continued improvement—and we can apply the same mentality to sustainability. The key here is not to get overwhelmed by everything you could do, and instead focus on what you can activate right now, one project at a time. Combined, these efforts will ensure safe and fun sporting opportunities well into the future.

This article is the third and final piece in a special series that explores how Canadian sport leaders are adapting and innovating to safeguard the well-being of athletes preparing for the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games and other major games during a global pandemic. Don’t miss the first and second articles in the series!

Highlights

Across the sport system, athletes are using their voice to influence positive change.
Athlete insights are being factored into key policy and program decisions on priorities that include safe sport, anti-doping, diversity and inclusion, gender equity, the March 2020 withdrawal of Team Canada from the Tokyo Games, and the rightful place for protest at an Olympic or Paralympic Games.
The world’s first independent athlete association, AthletesCAN, was born in Canada and has been at the forefront of athlete advocacy for almost 30 years.
Education and collaboration with sport organizations will support the expanding influence of athlete leadership.

Across multiple issues, on diverse platforms, high performance athletes are exercising greater influence on decision making than ever before.

“There is a moment when everybody recognizes that something significant needs to be done and that we simply have to get it right,” says Dasha Peregoudova who recently completed her term as President of AthletesCAN. “What I find most encouraging is the pivotal role that athlete leaders are playing in the decision-making process. Sport leaders have come to recognize that athletes are the experiential experts. Better than anyone else, we can bring that vital ‘field of play’ perspective to the table.”

With increasing regularity and consistency, athlete opinions are being factored into key policy and program decisions on a growing list of priorities that includes safe sport, anti-doping, diversity and inclusion, gender equity, the March 2020 withdrawal of Team Canada from the Tokyo Games, and the rightful place for protest at an Olympic or Paralympic Games.

Regarding Tokyo, athlete health and wellbeing emerged as the pivotal factor in the decision to withdraw from competition. Technical and medical experts agreed it would be unreasonable to expect athletes to grapple with the risks and uncertainly of training and competing in the midst of a global health pandemic. But the most convincing voices around the decision-making table were those of the athletes themselves.

Shifting landscapes

“I have to take my hat off to the athlete reps because they helped the rest of us appreciate that putting the athletes first meant that we had no choice but to pull out of Tokyo 2020,” noted Dr. Mike Wilkinson, Chief Medical Officer for the Canadian Olympic Committee (COC). “They shed light on the deliberations that made the final decision to withdraw a ‘no-brainer.’”

Seyi Smith, Former Chair of the Canadian Olympic Committee Athletes’ Commission

One of those athlete representatives was Seyi Smith, who served as Chair of the COC’s Athletes’ Commission at the time. A two-time Olympian in Athletics (London 2012) and Bobsleigh (PyeongChang 2018), Smith says the Tokyo decision demonstrates the increasing influence of the athlete voice in Canadian high performance sport.

“There’s a shift happening, for sure, and you can see it around key decisions,” he says. “As athletes, we’re being taken more seriously and senior leaders are asking for our opinions – not because they feel they have to check a box, but because they believe we have something important to bring to the table.”

Smith observes that sport leaders have historically come from one of two camps: the sport administrators who spend years learning the system and working their way up to senior roles; and the business professionals who bring the kind of corporate know-how that’s often missing in the not-for-profit sector.

“The system is only now recognizing that a critical voice has been absent in sport leadership, that a third group – athletes – have to be heard in order to round out those key perspectives that lead to well-informed decisions,” Smith says. “Whether it’s sustainable, whether it will continue to grow, and whether we’re able to use this influence to create lasting change, that’s still to be determined.”

Decades in the making

For pioneers in athlete advocacy, theirs was a dramatically different environment. Beckie Scott, 2002 Olympic gold medalist in cross-country skiing and a stalwart in the international anti-doping movement, recalls that when she first got involved in athlete representation, most organizations were happy to engage when it was convenient, and particularly when there was no threat to the larger business interests of sport.

During a September 2020 webinar hosted by SIRC, Scott shared that, “more often than not, athlete commissions and athlete committees were not set up to succeed. They were often reduced to being mouthpieces or puppets of organizations, and truly effective and meaningful athlete engagement wasn’t a priority.”

Experts in the House webinar with Beckie Scott: Politics vs Principle

Undeterred, Scott has devoted years to a crusade for clean sport. Allied with passionate counterparts from other countries, their work has exposed the persistent practices of drug cheats and the inability or unwillingness of international sport leaders to fix the kind of systemic cheating that sullied the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games and created an international firestorm that is still simmering today.

Scott is arguably one of the best-known Canadian advocates in sport, but would be the first to acknowledge that she is one of many homegrown athletes who have contributed to a decades-long campaign for change.

The role of institutions

In fact, the world’s first independent athlete association was born in Canada. AthletesCAN has been at the forefront of athlete advocacy for almost 30 years and is a well-established contributor to World Players Association (WPA), an international collective of player unions, that is driving change in sport globally as issues become increasingly complex and sophisticated. The WPA brings together 85,000 players across professional sport through more than 100 player associations in over 60 countries.

“There is strength in numbers; strength in learning, understanding, and sharing,” says Peregoudova. “Athlete advocacy is definitely gaining momentum and we’re seeing lots of evidence here in Canada. The emergence of the safe sport movement over the last couple of years is definitely the most visible example of that.”

Building a strong working relationship with the WPA has definitely helped AthletesCAN take its advocacy efforts “to another level,” according to Ashley LaBrie who served as the organization’s Executive Director from March 2015 through to November 2019. “Learning from those who have blazed the path before us in the athlete rights arena really enabled us to identify and seize opportunities more effectively to push athlete-centered priorities to the forefront of the conversation. When stories of athlete abuse took hold of media and public attention, and the federal sport minister announced safe sport a priority in 2018, inviting athletes to speak out; that unlocked a door that we didn’t hesitate to walk through,” she recalls. “AthletesCAN was ready with key athlete leaders, survivors, and a plan for mobilization and athlete engagement to ensure athletes were heard on this important issue.”

At the annual AthletesCAN Forum in September 2018, athlete representatives from more than 50 sports drafted a list of priorities and recommendations around safe sport issues, arguing that Canada needed to establish an independent national body to prevent and address athlete maltreatment.

Efforts to achieve the goal were advanced further in April 2019, when AthletesCAN hosted a two-day summit involving athletes, sport partners, subject matter experts, survivors, and advocates, “…building recommendations around a harmonized (universal) code (of conduct), coach-athlete relationships, and the implementation and accountability for safe sport from A to Z,” as described in the post-event press release. Less than two weeks later, the athlete voices helped advance and deepen discussion and sector commitment, collaborating with senior leaders from national sport and multi-sport service organizations at the National Safe Sport Summit hosted by the Coaching Association of Canada.

“A survey conducted by AthletesCAN in collaboration with the University of Toronto captured the experiences of 1,000 active and retired athletes. The findings painted a really disturbing picture of maltreatment within the Canadian system that simply couldn’t be ignored any longer,” says Allison Forsyth, an AthletesCAN Board member, Olympian, sexual abuse survivor, and safe sport advocate.

“As athletes, a few of us stood up at the CAC’s National Summit to share some very personal stories and to help the sport leaders in the room understand they are all part of a system that let it happen and that we are all part of the solution.”

The Summit produced a series of consensus statements to set the direction for the development of a Universal Code of Conduct to Prevent and Address Maltreatment in Sport (UCCMS), which was integrated into the policies of all federally funded sport organizations as of March 31, 2021.

“When given the chance, athletes have an enormous amount of knowledge, passion, and leadership skills to contribute as key stakeholders of sport,” said Peregoudova in an AthletesCAN media release about the April 2019 event. “Every decision making table discussion on the topic of how sport is delivered should echo with the sound of athlete voices and perspectives.”

What’s next?

Champions of athlete advocacy, both past and present, view the future with a mix of optimism, frustration, and concern. But they agree the athlete voice must be heard loud and clear to maintain the momentum built over the last few years.

Athletes have more power than they know, according to Beckie Scott, who counsels other athletes to get involved, to “…step into it, embrace it. You have more skin in the game than anyone, So, don’t make the mistake of choosing not to care or choosing to believe that sport has it all figured out and doesn’t need your help or your voice or your contribution.”

Athlete advocates will have ample opportunity to influence decision making on a substantive list of priorities on both the domestic and international sport agendas. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to disrupt training and competition for athletes at all levels, and there remain many questions about how organizers will protect the wellbeing of Olympians and Paralympians at the Tokyo Games.

A debate over the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) anti-protest rule will also play itself out around the Tokyo Games. The IOC made the rule stricter in early 2020 by restricting opportunities for athletes to protest. On behalf of the COC’s Athletes’ Commission, Seyi Smith presented a series of recommendations to the international federation to make the case for preserving the field of play for competition and nothing else. At the same time, he maintains there must be opportunities for athletes on the international stage to champion the causes that are important to them, “…just as the NBA has done around Black Lives Matter,” he told the CBC’s Scott Russell during a CBC-TV panel. “They’ve brought a lot of attention to something that … may not have had as much reach. And I don’t think it’s worth risking that by possibly limiting what athletes can and can’t say.”

During the same event, Canadian Olympic decathlete Damian Warner voiced the opinion that there has never been a better time for athletes to speak out on issues that are important to them or the communities they represent. “You see the NBA, the NHL, the NFL, everybody’s kind of making stances, standing up for what they believe in. And I think that’s extremely important as an athlete and I just hope that we’re able to do so at the Olympic Games.” In an international sport environment, he added, there are certain situations where the athlete’s voice is more powerful than their performance.

Sense of optimism

Overall, Smith has mixed feelings about the future of athlete advocacy in Canada. Having recently stepped down as Chair of the COC’s Athletes’ Commission, he expresses optimism about the strength of existing relationships and confidence that the athlete perspective will be prominently placed around the decision-making table at both the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Committees. He’s less optimistic, however, about what he calls “the institution of athlete representation” in Canadian sport.

“The COC includes us in everything. It’s a lot, but we love it, and we feel valued and engaged,” he says. However, Smith suggests similar opportunities for athlete voice are limited within some national sport organizations. “There remain some systemic issues that leave us vulnerable to being left out of key decisions.”

One of those issues, according to Allison Forsyth, is education and a lack of general understanding amongst today’s high performance athletes. She maintains that athletes have a responsibility to educate themselves and that sport organizations have an obligation to help athletes understand more about the key organizations, how the system works, and how funding decisions are made.

Beyond the need for greater education, AthletesCAN has done a comprehensive evaluation of governance structures within national sport organizations. The resulting position paper, The Future of Athlete Representation within Governance Structures of National Sport Organizations, released in November 2020, offers guiding principles and model bylaws to ensure that the athlete voice is heard.

The report concludes that, “…by including the athlete voice in [national sport organization] decision making and governance, Canadian sport institutions will increase their level of effectiveness and transparency, while promoting democratic ideals. Acts of good faith, inclusivity, and a will for success are all virtues needed for promoting the voice of athletes within Canadian sport governance.”

For Beckie Scott, the future of athlete advocacy rests with sport organizations who must make space at the decision-making table. “Engaging (athletes) and treating them as the important stakeholders that they are will not only be good for the athletes but also good for the viability and the long-term longevity of sport.”

The “win-win” scenario resonates with Dasha Peregoudova as well. She argues that if athletes are involved and given their proper voice, they will perform better. “It works in beautiful ways,” she says. “A key part of athlete success is feeling heard, empowered and respected.”

Peregoudova maintains that Canadian sport is “on the precipice of an unprecedented culture shift.” Essential to that shift, she argues, will be a system-wide effort to look at athletes through a human rights lens – as people first and athletes second.

Highlights

Sport leaders from Hockey Canada, Curling Canada, Gymnastics Canada, Equestrian Canada, Swimming Canada, and Sail Canada share their learnings from hosting a sport event during the COVID-19 pandemic.
When planning a pandemic sport event, collaboration with key stakeholders, including federal, provincial, and local health authorities, is critical.
For in-person competitions, minimize the amount of time athletes spend at the venue and keep them distanced as much as possible. Recognize that participants may experience extra stress wearing masks, following safety protocols, and competing in person.
To host successful virtual competitions, educate stakeholders on the process, from procedures and rules to using the technology. Be prepared to respond and adapt to challenges or feedback.
In-person or virtual, advancements in the use of technology have created novel and cost-effective ways to engage with fans and stakeholders, including livestreamed events, fantasy pools, and online 50/50 draws.

Teddy Katz, a former award-winning sports journalist and the founder of communications company, Think Redefined Inc., sat down with Canadian sport leaders for SIRC to hear some of the valuable lessons they learned hosting safe events during the pandemic. The crisis led to some of the biggest challenges in their history for these sport leaders, but it also led to some innovative new ways of thinking that will last long after the virus is in the past.

Hockey Canada – A World Junior Hockey Championship like no other

In the words of Dean McIntosh, Vice President of Hockey Canada, if you want to host a sport event during COVID-19, you have to prepare 10 different plans and expect to use the eleventh.

Two years ago, Hockey Canada started planning to host the 2021 World Junior Hockey Championship—a ritual for Canadians during the last week of December—in Red Deer and Edmonton, Alberta. Fans had scooped up nearly all the tickets when suddenly the pandemic, which forced many sports around the world to shut down in March 2020, threw everything into disarray. Could Hockey Canada somehow deliver the championship to 130 million television viewers in Canada and around the world? With no fans in the stands, there was little chance of breaking even.

“Until we had gold medals awarded on January 5th, I think we always felt there was a little bit of risk that we weren’t going make it through,” McIntosh says.

In March 2020 and the month that followed, Hockey Canada cancelled most events including its domestic championships. But in early August, with the support of funding partners including its broadcasters, Hockey Canada decided it would move ahead with the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) World Junior Hockey Championship. The IIHF helped make it possible by agreeing to Hockey Canada’s unprecedented request to host the event again the following year (December 2021) in Red Deer and Edmonton, which ensured Hockey Canada could deliver the kind of event it had planned for 2020 plus guaranteed revenue going forward.

McIntosh says that was critical. “I can tell you honestly, without that [agreement], that might have been something that would have prevented us from trying to deliver it this year.”

The move to allow Canada to host the World Junior Hockey Championship two years in a row also benefitted the fans. When Hockey Canada offered fans a choice between refunding their tickets for this year or keeping them for next year, 80% chose to retain their seats despite the financial toll the pandemic has taken on many Canadian families.

With the event set to move forward, Hockey Canada worked through the summer with federal, provincial, and local health authorities to ensure the proper COVID-19 protocols were in place to keep the players, community, and everybody else safe. It was a complicated process that involved many different groups, including Immigration Canada (with teams flying in from overseas). McIntosh and the team had weekly calls with the IIHF, Sport Canada, and Alberta Health. They learned they needed to be flexible when it came to getting the final approval from the authorities to move ahead.

“I can tell you very frankly that staff at the office of Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw, were probably very tired of seeing my number come up on their phones.”

Before coming to Canada, each national team quarantined and needed everybody to test negative for COVID-19 a minimum of three times. Several players and staff from different federations tested positive and were unable to come. Three chartered flights from Europe brought the teams directly into Edmonton’s International Airport. They needed to get special authorization to land there because at the time the airport wasn’t accepting international flights. Everyone went directly by motor coach to the bubble hotel and spent another five days in quarantine, eating meals in their rooms. Everyone had to wear a tracking bracelet to let organizers know if anyone broke quarantine, and the rules were put to the test immediately. A staff member from one team left the hotel for a couple of hours the night he arrived. After investigating, Hockey Canada sent the person home the next day.

“You need to set the tone early,” McIntosh says. “We had made commitments to Alberta Health, to the Public Health Agency of Canada, and to our corporate partners to deliver this event safely. If it was going to happen, we needed the support of everyone.”

Another new element included compliance officers for every team. There was even an online portal where people could report non-compliance anonymously. And, of course, testing continued throughout the event—a total of 10,476 tests to be exact.

“I’d wake up at six o’clock, and I’d get notes on the test results from the previous day,” McIntosh says. “On day one, when you see positive tests, your heart sinks and your mind starts to race.”

In all, there were 12 positive cases of COVID-19 among players and staff who were in the hotel bubble over the course of the three weeks. After the first positive cases, organizers cancelled some of the exhibition games and increased the quarantine time for some. With carefully planned protocols in place, McIntosh says those plans allow organizations to make rational decisions in stressful times but also need to be constantly re-evaluated.

“We went to our protocols. We had clear lines of communication on who was going to be told and what we needed to do as it related to positive tests.”

Curling Canada – Seven events, one bubble

As somebody who has been involved in planning multi-sport events—including the Toronto 2015 Pan American and Parapan American Games—Curling Canada’s CEO, Katherine Henderson, thought she had prepared for every possible scenario and potential crisis. But creating a mega bubble for a series of events to take place in Calgary between February and May 2021 was a new experience altogether. The first thing her team had to determine was if they could safely deliver key national and international events, including the Scotties Tournament of Hearts, the Tim Hortons Brier, the Home Hardware Canadian Mixed Doubles Championship, the BKT Tires and OK Tire World Men’s Championship, the Women’s Curling Championship presented by BKT Tires, and two Grand Slam of Curling events: The Players’ Championship and Champions Cup.

“This is just one huge exercise in risk management… the health risks, financial risk, reputation risk, and compliance risk. It’s sort of risk management on steroids,” Henderson says.

Considering the complexities and cost of orchestrating a safe event amid a global pandemic, not every sport is able to host a bubble event, says Henderson. “When we took a look at the fixed costs of setting up a situation that involves really strict health protocols with quarantines and lots of testing, I couldn’t see doing this for a single event… There’s a high barrier to entry.”

But curling, like hockey, was fortunate to have sponsors and financial partners, including its broadcast partner, TSN and RDS, on board. Henderson says other important partners were the athletes, many with goals to compete at the World Championships and 2022 Olympic Games, as well as Curling Canada’s member associations.

“The other part that’s really important here is we have kind of a moral duty to our member associations. Their business models depend very much on sending teams to national championships,” says Henderson.

Hockey Canada was generous with its time and shared lessons. Curling Canada implemented many of the same COVID-19 protocols, and had their own red, blue, and green zones separating athletes, media (TSN), and officials, respectively.

The bubble opened with the Scotties in February 2021. In the first few days, there was one false alarm: an athlete with food poisoning, which forced one game to be rescheduled. More recently, four positive COVID-19 tests among players – later deemed to be “false positives” – interrupted play at the 2021 BKT Tires and OK Tire World Men’s Curling Championship.

“I look forward to the day where I’m just on the edge of my seat because I’m watching great shots, rather than worrying about COVID-19,” says Henderson. “This virus is really sneaky, you cannot let your guard down for one second. It wears on you.”

Still, Henderson says it has been worth it. “We’ve had such a positive reception. I see it with athletes and staff, and even with how fans are reacting on social media. It gives you that little glimmer of normalcy.” Curling lovers even sent in photos to have their faces placed on cardboard cut-outs representing fans in the stands.

According to Henderson, keeping fans engaged is crucial—because when the pandemic is over, Curling Canada wants the 1,000 clubs across Canada to be filled to the brim with their two million curlers.

Gymnastics Canada – Virtual events become reality

At the end of 2020, Canada’s top gymnasts were facing another round of COVID-19 restrictions as the second wave of the virus roared around the country. Some could not even access their home gyms. So, in December 2020, Gymnastics Canada had to find a creative way to select the senior team athletes who would compete on the World Cup circuit to prepare for the 2021 Olympics Games in Tokyo. And, like many of us, they turned to virtual events.

The athletes recorded videos doing routines in their home gyms, and a few days later, judges scored them. Amanda Tambakopoulos, the Program Manager for Women’s Artistic Gymnastics at Gymnastics Canada, says the response was positive.

“We saw how important it was for the athletes to compete again and to be under that kind of positive pressure because it is very different than their regular training. Getting athletes in front of even virtual judges was really beneficial in terms of their preparation for Tokyo.”

However, she admits it took some getting used to for everyone involved. Even the athletes, who were able to compete in their home gyms on familiar equipment with their coaches at their side, described feeling stressed, says Tambakopoulos.

“It’s really strange. It requires so much work. We’re grateful to have everybody on board and showing so much adaptability and resilience in the face of everything going on this year.”

Gymnastics Canada hosted three more Elite Canada virtual competitions for junior and senior high performance athletes from February through April 2021. This gave gymnasts across Canada opportunities to compete in the event of their choice when they felt safe and ready. Virtual competitions also reduced costs for Gymnastics Canada, eased travel demands for athletes, and reduced barriers to the recruitment of volunteer officials, whose competition duties could be worked around at-home work obligations.

But to make these virtual competitions successful, Gymnastics Canada learned that education, for everyone involved, needed to be baked into the process. They held educational sessions for athletes and coaches on Zoom, using videos from the senior team virtual competition to demonstrate what worked well and not so well. They showed things like how best to set up the gym and where to place the camera for the best angles. The technology also needed to be adapted for the judges because the athletes are smaller on-screen than in person, making it harder to see some moves. They did a number of test sessions for the judges to help them get comfortable.

Considering the benefits and lessons learned, virtual events are a competition option that Gymnastics Canada will consider for the future, says Tambakopoulos.

“I think it’s really opened our eyes on how we can be even more adaptable and flexible with people’s realities. I think there’s going to be a lot of reflection going forward on how we can benefit from this virtual competition environment.”

Equestrian Canada – How regional events and livestreams kept the sport active

One of the busier national sport organizations during the past year was Equestrian Canada, with 124 Equestrian Canada sanctioned events run regionally around the country and more shows sanctioned by the provincial/territorial equestrian sport organizations, many of them streamed online in new ways. But according to James Hood, the High Performance Director for Equestrian Canada, that was only 25% of their usual competition schedule.

Cheval Quebec hosted the first Equestrian Canada regional event in June, just a few months after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic. They worked with their local health authority to incorporate the latest COVID-19 protocols, which meant running the event with no spectators, keeping officials to a minimum, and tightening up the schedule to ensure no unnecessary bodies were milling about the competition area.

According to Hood, the sport made an early return because training and competition is mostly outdoors and the horses need to be kept in good physical and mental health (e.g., fed, exercised) as there are health and welfare considerations. “The other advantage we have is that social distancing is relatively easy to maintain—you’re on a 2,000-pound animal so it automatically forces you into two metre distancing,” says Hood.

Despite the challenges of overseeing sanctioned competitions amid a global pandemic (and in the lead-up to the Olympic and Paralympic Games, no less), Hood identified some notable silver linings. For example, there were important advancements in the use of technology born out of necessity. “We were much more paper based,” explains Hood. “The technology shift in scoring and transmission will be really good in the long term.”

In addition, many show operators used cameras to livestream events so people could tune in online. They weren’t high-end broadcasts, but they were cost effective.

“The competition organizers were thinking about how to make it safe for the moms and dads, grandparents, and aunts and uncles to watch without being in the stands,” says Hood.

While Spruce Meadows and some of the sport’s more popular events have been livestreamed in the past, there was nothing done on this scale. Show operators and Equestrian Canada even worked with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation to have some of the events shown on its streaming platform, which helped to increase the visibility of the sport on a national scale.

“I think technology will continue to create those opportunities,” says Hood. “We need to be willing to adopt technology and look at those pieces to operate events going forward.”

Swimming Canada – A hybrid Olympic and Paralympic Trials

With 1000 participants and thousands more spectators expected to attend, Swimming Canada had the biggest Olympic and Paralympic Trials in its history scheduled for April 2020—until COVID-19 forced it to be postponed. After considering eight or nine different contingency plans, a scaled-down event in spring 2021 was announced to determine the athletes on its Olympic and Paralympic teams.

Typical championships have a preliminary round where the fastest athletes qualify for the final. The final race for the medals usually takes place that same evening. In contrast, the 2021 trials will involve only one race per event with a limited number of the top athletes invited to participate. Swimming Canada has invited 280 athletes to compete in the five-day event.

Jocelyn Jay, Senior Manager of Sports Development for Swimming Canada and a former national team swimmer, says one key criteria for the event is to minimize the amount of time swimmers are in the building and to keep them distanced as much as possible.

“We’ve got 40 swimmers in a block of time. The swimmers come into the building, they do their pre pool activation, they warm-up, they race, they warm-down and they leave. Then the next group of swimmers come in. It’s kind of a conveyer belt. They are moving through the building, making sure there’s no crossing paths.”

Jay says Swimming Canada has factored in layers upon layers of risk mitigation measures in a 35-page safety plan, which will be shared with the swim clubs sending athletes to the trials. Unlike the bubbles that hockey and curling created to run their championship events, clubs will be responsible for ensuring members are following COVID-19 protocols for travel and accommodation.

“The amount of time required for this one event with everything that needs to be considered is just as much work as running six or seven national events. It’s overwhelming because it’s constantly changing as restrictions fluctuate throughout the country,” says Jay.

Swimming Canada recognizes the extra stress participants may experience wearing masks, following protocols, and competing in person for the first time in months. That’s why another element in their plan will be regular check-ins with everyone, including athletes, coaches, and officials, once they are on site.

For now, Jay tries to prioritize and not think too far ahead.

“This event is at the end of May 2021. Who knows what the virus is going to look like at the end of May, with the variants and with vaccinations?”

While the question of what the virus will look like at the end of May is still up in the air, the evolving COVID-19 situation in Ontario and other provinces has already forced Swimming Canada to make changes to the Olympic and Paralympic Swimming Trials, Presented by Bell. The Olympic Trials will now be held in Toronto at the end of June, and the Paralympic Trials have been cancelled as the new dates conflict with a World Para-swimming event in Berlin. Swimming Canada will create alternative competitive opportunities for athletes hoping to earn a spot at the Paralympic Games in Tokyo.

Sail Canada – Making the most of an outdoor sport

Although Sail Canada postponed its different regional and national championships last year, which typically offer athletes a chance to compete with high-level sailors in their regions, it was able to host a national invitational event with 10 days of racing at the end of August in Kingston, Ontario. The event allowed national team athletes preparing for the Tokyo Games to get in some much needed competitive racing.

“We are fortunate in the sport of sailing,” says Katie Sweeting, High Performance Manager for Sail Canada. “We’re an outdoor sport that is naturally physically distant.”

Sweeting says they chose Kingston for their event because that is where the Sail Canada head office is located, many of the athletes were already there (reducing the need for travel), and it has ideal training conditions. Also, it was important that at the time of the event in August 2020, Kingston had no COVID-19 cases. Sweeting, who was in charge of COVID-19 protocols for the event, at first found it a daunting task but was able to work closely with the experts at the local health authority.

“We didn’t want to be creating an event in a community where there were no cases and bringing cases to them,” Sweeting says. “No one wants to be the sport that runs an event that causes an outbreak.”

The invitational event was limited to 40 of Canada’s top athletes. Protocols included the use of a fenced-off, restricted area for event participants at Portsmouth Olympic Harbour, which is open to the public. Even though they were outside, masks were mandatory at all times when athletes were not competing. All boats were set two metres apart. If athletes were experiencing any symptoms, testing was required and the individual was not allowed back onsite until they had a negative test. A doctor was also onsite throughout the event.

Sweeting says the biggest lesson she learned is to over-plan. On site porta-potty washrooms were professionally cleaned three times a day. Disposable masks were restocked several times during the event, even though participants were expected to provide their own. As the event wore on, Sail Canada learned that they needed to have someone on the ramp as the boats came in to hand out new masks to athletes, whose masks would get wet while racing as they would often stuff them in their lifejackets.

“It is possible. That was a big learning lesson for us,” says Sweeting. “If you follow the right steps, consult with the experts and you do it properly, it can work out well.

Knowing that building resilience is a key skill for athletes, Sail Canada has modelled that behaviour, says Sweeting.

“It would have been a lot easier for us to just say, ‘No, we’re going cancel everything. It’s too risky or too much work.’ We were showing the athletes that we’re willing to be resilient and get creative. And I think they really valued that.”

Event reinvention post COVID-19

The different sport leaders spoke about what they learned not in spite of, but because of COVID-19. Their stories showcase the Canadian sport community’s resilience and dedication to athletes, coaches, officials, staff, volunteers, and fans alike. And perhaps most notably, the myriad pivots and plans these organizations have made to run safe events have led to innovative new ways of thinking that will be harnessed long after the pandemic.

For example, the pandemic accelerated and forced all sports to embrace the use of technology. As a result, many found novel and cost effective ways to connect with stakeholders that may continue in the future. That same technology reduced the number of volunteers and hours required for them to be on site, which may alleviate the expected attrition of volunteers in the coming years. The use of technology also allowed some sports to bring in new sources of revenue: Curling Canada started new fantasy pools to engage with fans and Hockey Canada moved fundraising initiatives such as 50/50 draws online. Beyond technology, many sports uncovered new ways to collaborate with partners, including Hockey Canada. When they needed a sponsor for contact tracing, they approached Telus. That fit with the companies’ core values around connecting Canadians.

COVID-19 has changed everything, says Hockey Canada’s Dean McIntosh. “How we plan events, what the priorities are, how we drive revenues, how we manage expenses, how we engage communities, I think it’s all changed. I do believe that we are going to see a reinvention.”

Highlights

Brock University partnered with Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games to invest in research, build curricular connections, and enhance community engagement.
Brock University’s interest in the Games draws upon their commitment to the Niagara community, a key part of the institution’s mandate since it was formed in 1964.
The Brock-Canada Games Academic Committee was formed to guide academic innovation through the Canada Games. Research projects are diverse, with representation across the university’s faculties.
The Brock University Volunteer Association offers a community of like-minded students, delivers training and skill development, and connects students with quality volunteer experiences.
The academic legacies being developed at Brock University through the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games can provide a model for future Canada Games to maximize outcomes for host communities.

When we think of legacies from major games, often we think of new facilities, increased engagement in sport and physical activity, or heightened feelings of national pride. As a key partner in the Niagara 2022 Canada Summer Games, Brock University took an additional approach, leveraging the Games to invest in research, build curricular connections, and enhance community engagement. SIRC’s Sydney Millar connected virtually with Julie Stevens, an Associate Professor of Sport Management and Special Advisor for the Canada Games to Brock President Gervan Fearon, to talk about what’s happening on campus and the expected legacies for the Niagara region and future Canada Games host communities.

SIRC: What do the Canada Games represent to you, and why was the University originally interested in being involved with a bid to host the Games?

Julie Stevens (JS): For me, the Canada Games are special. I have attended five Games as a researcher, observer, spectator, and most importantly, as an assistant coach with Team Alberta women’s hockey in Cornerbook, 1999. We won a Bronze medal in triple OT! The game was played in Deer Lake and it felt like everyone from the town was in the arena. The Canada Games stirs a strong sense of community within me—even though I wasn’t a local. I conducted research on the organizational capacity of Host Societies in Regina (2005) and Whitehorse (2007), which were two unique settings and communities. I learned a great deal about the passion and resourcefulness of volunteers who stage the Games. Brock University’s interest in the Games draws upon our commitment to the Niagara community, a key part of the institution’s mandate since it was formed in 1964. A community initiative like this reflects our institutional value centred on community engagement.

SIRC: Tell me about the development of the Brock-Canada Games Academic Committee.

Julie Stevens, Associate Professor of Sport Management at Brock University and Special Advisor for the Canada Games to Brock President Gervan Fearon

JS: “Experiential learning” at both Brock University and Niagara College was included in the bid package submitted to the Canada Games in 2016. However, it wasn’t until December 2017 that we really began to dig into what this could and should mean for Brock University and our community. Earlier that year, Gervan Fearon joined Brock as our President and Vice-Chancellor. He has a strong vision for the role of the university in supporting regional growth and development, and saw the Games as a catalyst for academic innovation. We hosted an event with two Board members of the Host Committee that was an open call to the Brock community. The result was the creation of the Brock-Canada Games Academic Committee as the group to guide our commitment to academic innovation through the Canada Games. The Academic Committee is truly a campus-wide collaboration involving faculty, staff and students from all seven Brock Faculties and many support units. We developed a strategic plan to maximize outcomes for the Brock community focused on three key areas—research, curriculum, and community engagement.

SIRC: Let’s take a deep dive into the three key areas. Tell me first how the Games are being leveraged to support research.

JS: It’s easy to see how the Games could be a great opportunity for sport-related researchers. However, the committee had a different vision—they wanted to support cross-disciplinary research and engage researchers across campus in examining the athletic, economic, political, social, and cultural impacts of hosting on the immediate community and surrounding area. Through the new Vice-President Research (VPR) Canada Games Grant Initiative, $143,000 in internal research funds has been allocated since 2020. The grants support innovative research or creative activities in any discipline and on any topic related to the Games, student research employment and professional development, and more generally the enhancement of research capacity within the university.

SIRC: Tell me about some of the research projects that have been funded through the VPR Canada Games Grants.

JS: As we’d hoped, there is a great diversity of projects, with representation across the university’s faculties, utilizing a wide range of methods, and exploring various aspects of the Games and sporting culture in the region (visit the Brock-Canada Games site for news about the 2020 and 2021 research projects). For example, from the Department of Kinesiology in the Faculty of Applied Health Sciences, Dr. Nicole Chimera is examining the incidence of injury and illness experienced by Canada Games athletes from 2009 to 2019. This project will increase understanding of injury and illness during the Games, informing future policies to reduce and manage sports injuries. From the School of Fine and Performing Arts, Dr. Amy Friend’s Movement Across the Waterways project explores the links between kayak and canoe-based watersports and the regional ecosystems, with a particular focus on the turtle – a local and endangered inhabitant of local waterways, and the official mascot of the 2022 Canada Summer Games. The project will create visual and aural material that will provide immersive perspectives of rowing and canoeing within the Niagara region. Another exciting project is the creation of the Niagara Games Narrative Digital Storytelling Repository—a long-term archive of all 2022 Canada Summer Games content that will be accessible to researchers, students, and members of the public for years to come. Led by staff at the Brock University Library and Digital Scholarship Lab, the Repository will capture everything from scholarly research to community activities, documenting the impact of the Games on the Niagara Region. To date, 22 projects have been funded through the VPR Canada Games Grants.

SIRC: The second area of the strategic plan relates to teaching and learning and curricular connections to the Games. Tell me about it.

JS: We want to ensure all students get a taste of the Games and become excited about opportunities related to the Games with ideas, getting involved, or attending events. The Canada Games are more than just the athletic performances—they are also about tourism, community development, event management, environmental responsibility, public well-being, and community ceremonies, offering a wide variety of curriculum connections and learning opportunities. There are three ways faculty members can choose to incorporate Canada Games content and activities into their courses – direct engagement, indirect engagement, and case studies.

Direct engagement with Canada Games could involve the creation of a new course or the use of an assignment that meets academic learning outcomes and addresses a need of the Canada Games. For example, a fourth-year French course has integrated Canada Games-related terminology, including technical terms related to athletes, coaches, organizations, infrastructure and facilities, and hierarchies and relationships between individuals involved in the Games. Students will be well prepared for paid or volunteer positions with Translation Services during the Games. Indirect engagement with Canada Games could involve collaboration with a local community partner on a project related to the Canada Games. For example, interactive arts and science students are working with the Niagara 2022 Host Society to develop a technology-savvy medal reveal event. Finally, faculty members are also encouraged to use the Games as a case to complement and enhance academic content. For example, Math and science students are working through unique case study “anonymous” data sets shared by the Canada Games Council to develop statistics and information management skills.

A new stream of Brock’s Teaching and Learning Innovation Grants, totalling $50K, was created to enhance student learning by offering faculty members one-time funding to develop innovative ways to incorporate Canada Games content and community projects into Brock courses. In the short-term, the initiatives will support faculty members to enhance courses and take advantage of the community-centred aspects of the Games. In the long-term, new teaching approaches will be developed that can be used in conjunction with other community events in the future.

SIRC: I really appreciate how the investment in curriculum will have an impact on the mindset of faculty, encouraging them to embrace the Games and other community events to make course content more relevant and applied for Brock students. But the third component of the strategy, community engagement, takes that goal one step further. What’s the vision for this component?

JS: At the core of our work around community engagement is the creation of a new student club called the Brock University Volunteer Association (BUVA). While the hosting of major events requires significant support from volunteers, we wanted to create an initiative that would maximize impact for students. Therefore, the BUVA was developed to build a community of like-minded students, deliver training and skill development to students, and of course, connect students with unique volunteer opportunities with the Games and other community organizations in our region. We recognize the potential of volunteering to contribute to the community and to build the skills, experiences, and networks of students, but we wanted to take the element of chance out of the equation through a formal student association. By encouraging peer-to-peer interaction and facilitating connections to diverse volunteer experiences, the BUVA helps ensure positive outcomes for the students and the organizations.

SIRC: The BUVA was launched in 2019. What impact have you seen to date?

JS: The BUVA has been a huge success and is a significant legacy program as part of our Student Life outreach. In 2019-2020, BUVA members participated in monthly training sessions delivered by Brock staff, faculty and alumni to better prepare them to be engaged volunteers; and contributed 385 volunteer hours to organizations and events across the Niagara Region (members commit to a minimum of 20 volunteer hours). In a satisfaction survey of BUVA members, 100% of student respondents said they would recommend BUVA to a friend or classmate.

There are also other ways for students to gain volunteer experience. One example involves Brock students serving as Media Leads for the Games. The Host Society championed this initiative by supporting the application and selection process, and will provide ongoing leadership for the team. A total of 15 students are involved in this important planning volunteer role and will gain experience in media relations and promotion, as well as build teamwork and communication skills.

SIRC: How else is Brock University contributing to the Games?

JS: Brock University also provided a parcel of land where Canada Games Park is being constructed. This new facility includes a sport and ability centre, arenas, gymnasiums and an outdoor facility with a track, athletic field, and beach volleyball courts. It will be the central site during the Games and will provide a valuable community resource after. In addition, Brock will be hosting a number of other athletic events in its facilities and will play a key role as a host for students and organizers during the Games.

SIRC: Tell me about the impact of COVID-19 on the Games and Brock’s associated activities.

JS: Prioritizing the health and safety of all athletes, coaches, staff, volunteers, spectators, and the broader Niagara community, the 2021 Canada Games were postponed in September 2020, and have since been rescheduled for August 6-21, 2022. As a partner for the Games, Brock University is supporting the Host Society in ensuring the excitement for the Games continues to build.

COVID-19 has had a profound impact on the Brock community. Faculty and administrative staff have been particularly concerned with the mental health of students, and have developed a wide range of initiatives to support them. Members of the BUVA have really stepped up to support each other, complementing monthly training and skills development with a second monthly meeting to support social connections and reduce isolation. Volunteer opportunities were of course affected by public health restrictions, but the BUVA has been creative in supporting virtual opportunities, not only for the students, but to support community organizations that are adapting to this new reality in a variety of ways.

SIRC: Tell me what impact you think will be realized through this initiative for the Brock community?

JS: Key to the success of the Brock University-Canada Games Academic Committee is its alignment with the four key priorities of the university’s 2018-2025 strategic plan:

Offering a transformational and accessible academic and university experience;
Building research capacity across the University;
Enhancing the life and vitality of our local region and beyond; and
Fostering a culture of inclusivity, accessibility, reconciliation and decolonization.

The Academic Committee is achieving measurable outcomes related to these priorities by enhancing student experiences and community engagement through course content and placements, and the BUVA; and supporting innovation in research, scholarly and creative activities through the investments in research and course development. The Academic Committee is an example of how the University is putting the strategic plan’s priorities into action to improve and enhance our programs, services and partnerships for the future.

SIRC: And what do you imagine will be the legacy of the Brock-Canada Games Academic Committee for other Canada Games host communities?

The Canada Games Council (CGC) has a well-developed transfer-of-knowledge program to support the sharing of new approaches and lessons learned between host committees. For the most part, this focuses on Games logistics, such as accreditations, facility management, sponsorship, volunteer management, etc. However, universities and colleges are common Games partners. I hope the partnership between Brock University and the Niagara 2022 Host Committee will raise the bar for future collaboration between host committees and academic institutions, and provide a model that can be scaled up or down based on capacity. The cross-campus and multidisciplinary approach we’ve used can absolutely be recreated on other campuses and we will share our model with the CGC so it might add to its transfer-of-knowledge program and resources.

More broadly, I think it expands the focus of Canada Games legacies from facility and economic development to include academic scholarship and long-term relationships between academic institutions, regional organizations, and the student population who are tomorrow’s leaders. For those of us who believe in the value of sport in society, I think the model embodies the values of service, collaboration, and leadership, and ultimately contributes to the Canada Games’ vision to “strengthen the fabric of Canada through the power of sport.”

Mary Cain, a former record-breaking phenom, made a different type of headline when she spoke up about the pressure she faced to lose weight that caused her to disappear from the running scene (Cain, 2019). Cain’s willingness to speak up started a social media movement that brought to the public’s attention the cost of under-fuelling to an athlete’s physical and mental health.

The evolution of relative energy deficiency in sport

While not realizing it at the time, Cain, who had lost her period, experienced five bone stress fractures, and whose performance was suffering, was experiencing relative energy deficiency in sport (RED-S). Introduced in 2014 by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) consensus group, RED-S is a syndrome that impairs various physiological functions, including metabolic rate, menstrual function, bone health, immunity, protein synthesis, and cardiovascular health (Mountjoy et al., 2014). The underlying cause of RED-S is low energy availability – this occurs when calorie intake is insufficient to meet the calories expended through exercise, leaving inadequate energy for normal bodily function (Loucks & Heath, 1994).

While the terminology of RED-S was not introduced until 2014, the negative impact of low energy availability on athlete health was not a new finding. Studies in the 1980’s demonstrated that amenorrhea – the absence of menses or irregular menstrual cycles – had implications not only for reproduction, but was also detrimental to bone health (Drinkwater et al., 1984, 1986). Building on this foundational research, the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) published a position statement on the “female athlete triad” in 1997 – an interrelated syndrome of disordered eating, absence of menses or irregular menstrual cycles, and poor bone health (Otis et al., 1997).

While the female athlete triad undoubtedly enhanced research on athlete health, accumulating evidence pointed to the fact that low energy availability had negative impacts beyond bone health and reproductive function, and that a state of low energy availability was also of concern to male athletes (Mountjoy et al., 2014). Notably, the 1997 female athlete triad ACSM position statement highlights that male athletes could be at risk of disordered eating and that this was associated with poor bone health and reductions in the male sex hormone testosterone (Otis et al., 1997). However, the terminology of the female athlete triad is not inclusive to both sexes, and males were largely excluded from research assessing the impact of low energy availability on athlete health. As such, the term RED-S was introduced to be more comprehensive and inclusive of both female and male athletes (Mountjoy et al., 2014). Since the 2014 consensus statement on RED-S, there has been much advancement on RED-S research, as well as an updated IOC consensus statement in 2018 (Mountjoy et al., 2018). This has ultimately served to increase awareness of RED-S and the serious health and peformance outcomes that can result.

Risk and prevalence

Athletes competing in sports with high rates of disordered eating are considered to be at a higher risk of developing RED-S. This includes athletes competing in aesthetically judged sports (figure skating, rhythmic and artistic gymnastics, synchronized swimming), body-weight dependent sports (long-distance running, mountain and bike cycling, ski jumping, jumping eventing in athletics), and weight class sports (lightweight rowing, judo, wrestling) (Sundgot-Borgen et al., 2013). However, RED-S is still a concern for athletes competing in other sports. For example, within sprinting (a sport not typically associated with RED-S), one study reported 39% of elite female athletes presented with indicators of RED-S (Sygo et al., 2018), which was comparable to the 44% of female ultra-endurance runners identified as at risk of RED–S in another study (Folscher et al., 2015). RED-S does not only occur from disordered eating or intentional reductions in calorie intake, but can also occur unintentionally. For example, an athlete who is unaware of their calorie needs, coupled with a reduced appetite from training, may develop RED-S unintentionally if the energy deficit is not addressed over the long-term (Douglas et al., 2017).

RED-S can occur in athletes of any competitive status. Among world class endurance athletes, 37% of females presented with amenorrhea and 40% of males with testosterone in the lowest quartile range indicative of RED-S (Heikura et al., 2018), which is similar to the reported 40% of Australian female athletes competing at the 2016 Rio Olympic games who were identified as at risk of RED-S (Drew et al., 2018). Similarly, among recreational female exercisers, 45% had risk factors associated with RED-S (Slater et al., 2016). To date there has been little research assessing RED-S prevalence among para-athletes; however, one study suggests a majority of para-athletes (62%) were trying to lose weight, and a number of indicators associated with RED-S were reported in this population (Brook et al., 2019). This included 44% reporting menstrual dysfunction and 55% with low bone mineral density (Brook et al., 2019). While the full prevalence of RED-S has yet to be uncovered, these studies demonstrate that RED-S may represent a hidden danger to athletes.

Health implications

The initial health outcomes of RED-S focused on amenorrhea and bone health (Drinkwater et al., 1984, 1986). In women, reduced bone health occurs not only from the low estrogen that occurs with amenorrhea, but also from poor calorie intake (De Souza et al., 2008; De Souza & Williams, 2005). Likewise, in male athletes, the reduced testosterone seen in situations of a calorie deficit has negative implications for bone health (Hooper et al., 2017; Smith & Rutherford, 1993). While young athletes may be unconcerned about the implications of reproductive dysfunction, this increases the risk of bone stress injury development during training and competition (Heikura et al., 2018), and in later years, can increase the risk of osteoporosis as peak bone mass is developed during adolescence and young adulthood (Baxter-Jones et al., 2011).

A notable change with the new terminology of RED-S (instead of female athlete triad) was that it expanded awareness of the health outcomes of low energy availability beyond reproductive function and bone health. Other health consequences include:

Cardiovascular: While physical activity is generally considered to have positive implications on the cardiovascular system, athletes with RED-S may be predisposed to cardiovascular disease. Studies show female athletes with RED-S had impaired vascular function (Hoch et al., 2003; O’Donnell et al., 2014, 2007) and unfavourable lipid profiles (Ayres et al., 1998; Friday et al., 1993; Kaiserauer et al., 1988; Rickenlund et al., 2005).
Metabolic: Athletes with RED-S often have a suppressed resting metabolic rate, which serves as an energy conservation mechanism (Koehler et al., 2016; Melin et al., 2015; Torstveit et al., 2018). This reduced resting metabolic rate explains why athletes with RED-S have a stable body weight despite being in a calorie deficit, as the body’s calorie requirements are decreased (Trexler et al., 2014).
Hematological: RED-S has been implicated in increasing the risk of iron deficiency, which can be detrimental to exercise performance and recovery. Iron deficiency may occur directly from reduced dietary iron intake, or be caused by the release of hormones that reduce iron absorption (Badenhorst et al., 2019; Ishibashi et al., 2020).
Psychological: Poor psychological health can contribute to the development of RED-S, but calorie restriction can also result in psychological consequences, such as major mood disturbances in athletes (Fagerberg, 2018). Higher levels of depression, excessive concerns about dieting and weight gain (Bomba et al., 2014, 2007), and a greater need for social approval (Strock et al., 2020) have all been reported in athletes with RED-S.

Performance implications

For many athletes, the development of RED-S is precipitated by changes to their diet to improve performance. But without the right balance between exercise intensity and caloric intake they negatively impacted their health and performance. Calorie restriction results in reduced muscle glycogen stores (Kojima et al., 2020) that may reduce an athlete’s tolerance of training and competition demands (Costill et al., 1988). In comparison to healthy counterparts, female athletes with RED-S have been shown to have impaired reaction time, knee muscle strength, and knee muscle endurance (Tornberg et al., 2017). Likewise, female swimmers with RED-S showed reductions in swim performance over a swim season, while healthy counterparts improved performance (Vanheest et al., 2014). Performance decreases may occur indirectly due the health consequences of RED-S such as iron deficiency or iron deficiency anemia (Sim et al., 2019), or by interfering with an athlete’s ability to consistently train and compete due to the increased risk of illness (Drew et al., 2018) and injury (Heikura et al., 2018; Logue et al., 2019).

The warning signs of RED-S

Given the negative health and performance outcomes associated with RED-S, early identification is vital. While low energy availability is the underlying cause of RED-S, calculating an athlete’s level of energy availability based on caloric intake and exercise energy expenditure is not recommended due to the considerable calculation error (Burke et al., 2018). There are screening tools available, such as the Low Energy Availability in Females Questionnaire (Melin et al., 2014) and the RED-S Clinical Assessment Tool (CAT), to assess an athlete’s risk of RED-S and guide return to play decisions (Mountjoy et al., 2015). While both are valuable, they are meant for use by researchers and trained medical professionals.

However, coaches, teammates, family, and friends are usually in the position to be the first to recognize early warning signs in athletes that warrant further investigation by a medical professional. These may include:

Physical changes:

Missing or irregular periods in females
Low sex drive and decline in morning erectile function in males
Changes in weight or lack of expected growth and development in adolescent athletes
Recurring injuries and illness
Reduced body temperature and increased sensitivity to cold
Gastrointestinal issues such as constipation or bloating
Downy growth of hair on the body

Behavioural changes:

Restrictive eating such as cutting out food groups, counting, measuring, or weighing foods
Avoiding food-related social activities
Secretive behaviour regarding food intake and/or exercise
Pre-occupation with food, calories, body shape, and weight
Additional training above what is required and/or difficulties taking rest days
Disturbed sleep and sleeping difficulties

Psychological changes:

Becoming withdrawn and reclusive
Anxiety, irritability, and difficulties concentrating
Increased attention and/or criticism of body
Body image dissatisfaction and distortion

It is important to note that it should never be assumed that an athlete is well just because they appear to be a healthy weight, or even if they are overweight. Athletes may be in a calorie deficit despite having a stable body weight due to reductions in resting metabolic rate. RED-S can occur in athletes of any sport, across any age, body size, culture, socioeconomic status, and athletic ability. The development of guidelines, referral protocols and education for athletes, coaches, integrated support team members, and others could help support early identification of athletes at risk of or experiencing RED-S.

Treatment and recovery

Similar to their role in recognizing early warning signs of RED-S, coaches, teammates, family, and friends play a critical role in supporting struggling athletes to seek help from a trained professional. This is critical as early identification and treatment is important to prevent long-term health outcomes from RED-S. While addressing the underlying energy deficit is necessary in the treatment of RED-S, treatment usually involves a multi-disciplinary team of health care professionals to address the inter-related facets of this condition, including a sports medicine physician, registered dietitian, and psychologist (Mountjoy et al., 2015).

In the case of RED-S due to unintentional low energy availability, nutrition education from a registered dietitian may suffice (Mountjoy et al., 2018). However, when an athlete presents with disordered eating or a clinical eating disorder, ongoing medical, dietary, and mental health support will typically be required (Mountjoy et al., 2018). Early identification and appropriate management of disordered eating is especially important as this leads to better outcomes (Wells et al., 2020). The decision for continued sport participation in an athlete with RED-S will depend on the athlete’s clinical presentation. In some instances, an athlete may be allowed to train in a supervised setting with ongoing re-evaluation, but in other circumstances, participation in no activity will be recommended as continued training or competition may pose a serious jeopardy to athlete health (Mountjoy et al., 2015). Coaches and trainers should collaborate with the athlete and treatment team and adjust training load accordingly. Like the treatment strategies employed, the time for recovery will differ with each athlete, their unique situation and clinical presentation. Throughout the recovery and treatment process, coaches, teammates, family, and friends play an important role in providing support to the athlete.

How coaches and help prevent RED-S

Sport organizations and those involved in athlete care are in a unique situation to create a healthy sport culture that maintains athlete’s physical and mental health. Creating a healthy sport culture is critical for the prevention of RED-S. This involves increasing awareness through education for athletes, coaches, trainers, administrators, parents, and all involved in athlete care (Mountjoy et al., 2018), and having a zero tolerance policy for toxic training environments or practices that include body shaming, over-exercising, and under-fuelling (Ackerman et al., 2020).

Practical tips for coaches to create a healthy sport culture:

Select team captains or leaders that have healthy relationships with food and body and can serve as role models for other athletes
Schedule frequent team social activities that involve fun food (pizza, ice cream etc)
Focus on enhancing athlete performance via non-dieting strategies such as mental and psychological approaches and remind athletes that sport performance is determined by numerous factors (including genetics, training, sleep, mental health etc) and nutrition is just one of these factors
De-emphasize weight by avoiding comments on your own weight or an athlete’s body as even seemingly positive comments could be reinforcing hidden harmful behaviors such as food restriction and overexercising. Some examples of comments to avoid include:
- “You look great – have you lost weight?”
- “I hate the way that my thighs look in these shorts”
- “You look like you’re getting a little heavier”
Reframe language and avoid conversations about restricting food or labelling food as “good/bad,” “healthy/unhealthy,” “clean/junk.” For instance:
- Instead of “How many calories are in that?” or “I can’t eat that” try “No, thank you”
- Instead of “This is bad for me. I’m going to need to workout after eating this” try saying nothing.
Have no involvement in assessing the body composition of athletes, including the weighing of athletes. If an athlete expresses wanting to change body composition they should be referred to a registered dietitian to implement safe nutritional changes

Conclusion

Since the seminal findings of Drinkwater in the 1980’s, much has been learned about the health and performance implications of under-fuelling in athletes. Despite the significant progress that has been made, there is still much work to be done. This includes research examining the extent of RED-S within the current sports system and changes in policies to protect athletes from the health and performance outcomes of low energy availability.

Within the Canadian high performance sport system, a number of RED-S related projects are underway, including the development of a validated set of protocols (medical diagnosis/steps) for the prevention, early diagnosis and management of RED-S. For more information about this project and others in Canada, and around the world, click here. Canadian leadership on this issue is being supported by Own the Podium through Innovation for Gold (I4G) and Mitacs funding, and by B2ten and 94Forward.

The global knowledge society is one in which we can never know everything we will need to know to be successful – something the pandemic has brought into sharp focus. Sport leaders need an agile method capable of gathering knowledge from many sources and that encourages reformulations and innovations to address ever new challenges. With increasing frequency, sport leaders are engaging in social learning spaces (SLSs) without knowing it, and without explicit knowledge of how best to make these interactions most effective. In response, this article aims to help build literacy around SLSs – an innovative tool to help sport leaders more effectively tackle the key issues today and in the future.

What is a social learning space?

The term SLS is less familiar to many than its cousin “community of practice” (Wenger, 1998). Both concepts are rooted in social learning theory and underpinned by three basic assumptions:

Humans are fundamentally social beings;
Learning is at the core of our existence; and
As we learn, we become.

Understanding learning in this way means that as we learn through interacting with others and the world we are developing our identity; the person we are at any time being the sum of all our previous experiences (Jarvis, 2006).

An effective community of practice is one form of SLS. Other forms include one-on-one conversations or mentorships, conferences or workshops, and online networks of hundreds of people. SLSs are a mechanism for learning and change that enable participants to create knowledge and formulate new ways of doing the things they care about. This “doing” is our practice and can refer to anything from coaching a specific group of athletes, to developing sport leaders, to promoting social justice in an organization. SLSs are not defined by physical area, but by the social relationships of the participants along with a mutual understanding that they can learn together (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020). The three important characteristics of a SLS, which make it different than participation in other places of interaction, are that participants:

Care to make a difference about something;
Engage uncertainty; and
Pay attention to data.

Caring to make a difference (i.e., having a passion to learn and effect change) is necessary but not sufficient to make a social learning space. What makes a social learning space distinct from other groups where people gather around a passion, for example a reading group, is that the other participants appreciate, and indeed welcome, the uncertainty resulting from the “tension between caring to make a difference and having a clear path to get there” (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020, p. 21); and are committed to working together to muddle through key issues, while paying attention to the effects of any changes made to practice.

This article draws on our work with SLSs since 2000 through our lab, the University of Ottawa Research Group for Coach Development. This work includes at least seven projects with ten host organizations (e.g., local clubs, and provincial and national organizations) that brought together coaches and sport administrators to engage in cycles of collective and individual reflection interspersed with the application of new ways of doing things in their practice, all in the service of learning to make a difference.

Table 1: Examples of social learning space outcomes

Personal	Group	Organization
Women coaches came to understand that they could continue to coach and become a mother	Major shifts in perspective, such as coaches sharing rather than guarding their knowledge	Increased numbers of women coaches, coach developers, and referees recruited and trained
Professional development credits for coach development	Shared understanding of technical terms and novel technologies	Better alignment between high performance standards and developmental programs

Social learning spaces and value creation

Value creation in SLSs is a process rather than an end goal. When the participants in a SLS feel their participation is helping them move toward the difference they care to make, they see value (Wenger-Trayner & Wenger-Trayner, 2020). In the SLSs with which we are involved, we use the Value Creation Framework proposed by these authors to guide how we generate value, how we translate this value by doing something with it, how we set our hopes and expectations for a SLS, and how we evaluate whether the value is making a difference. The framework proposes eight value cycles – immediate, potential, applied, realized, enabling, strategic, orienting, and transformative – described in Table 2.

Table 2: Value creation framework descriptors and examples of dimensions

Value Cycle	Descriptor	Example of dimensions
Orienting	Interactions with the broader landscape	Exploring connections across the landscape
Immediate	Your experience of the SLS	Fun being around like-minded people
Potential	What do you get out of the SLS	Social capital, tools, tips
Applied	What you do with what you gained	Confidence; implementing an idea
Realized	The outcome of applied value	Personal, group, and organizational level changes
Transformative	Deeper or broader effects	New identities and reframing perspectives
Strategic	Conversations with stakeholders	Alignment and deliberate planning
Enabling	What should be in place to make it possible	Logistics, back-channel

Adapted from: Duarte, Culver, & Paquette (in press).

For example, our research group created and sustained SLSs for parasport coach development. Using the framework we supported the participants to map their learning landscape to better understand where and with whom they developed their practice. This allowed us to collectively create an approach to leverage the existing structures in the sport system to build learning capability, broadening the flow and nature of knowledge. The success of the project was supported through strategic thinking about how to enable learning opportunities (strategic and enabling value). For example, planning meetings in conjunction with times when participants would already be in the same place, such as national tournaments. These meetings aimed to co-create knowledge (immediate and potential value), and stimulated reflection on how to use the new ideas and knowledge created in this space (applied value). During this process we listened attentively and observed how and when participants were applying new practices, looking for evidence of the positive and negative outcomes (realized value). In this way we believe we have shifted the thinking of the sport organization in terms of how to bring about change (transformative value).

Putting social learning spaces into practice: A story about creating value

The best way to explain the process that can lead to value being created in an SLS is through a story about creating value. The fictional story below is based on our research and is designed to introduce you to the eight value cycles and some of the crucial elements of nurturing an effective SLS. Our story starts when Alex, who oversees development for a provincial sport organization, gave us a call.

Alex: Hi, Diane. Thanks for taking my call. Last week we had our AGM and many participants raised concerns about girls dropping out of sport at age 14 to 15. What’s a bit frustrating is we had the same conversation last year. At that time, we identified a gap and even attended a workshop on the subject that suggested creating a community of practice. So, when the season started, we hosted a “community of practice” during one of our competitions and we shared some ideas from across the country. I learned a few tips during that meeting, but no one took the leadership and we have not met since.

Diane: Hi Alex, unfortunately that’s not only happening to your sport. By the way, I’m referring to both the drop out of girls and to organizations misinterpreting what a community of practice is and its limitations. Your comments are on point on many levels. First, being excited when meeting people who share the same passion and who want to learn is an example of what social learning theory calls immediate value. Second, the ideas, tips, and gaining access to the network of people are dimensions of potential value.

Alex: I really want to understand more about the other types of value.

Diane: Sure, what your organization did was a great start! For instance, looking for gaps in your own sport and giving me a call to search for new ways of doing things are two examples of orienting value. Moreover, your organization established “girls’ drop out” as a priority, which is an example of strategic value. Once a priority is identified and accurately communicated to the other members of the organization, it becomes easier to justify the investment of resources to tackle that priority.

Alex: Resources! I cringe just of thinking about money and how to handle all the priorities that our mainly volunteer organization has.

Diane: Fear not Alex. What enabling value refers to is not just financial resources, but also human, knowledge, structure, media, etc. Let me give you an example. Our research with Curling Canada identified that developmental wheelchair curling coaches wanted to have more access to the National Team Program coaches and chat about their training tools and strategies. So, Curling Canada provided enabling value in a several ways, such as supplying the software for online meetings, and asking the high-performance coaches to join the developmental coaches in our meetings and the virtual discussion forums.

Alex: If I’m following your rationale, what we incorrectly called a community of practice lacked the ongoing aspect of the example you just gave.

Diane: You’re right again, but let’s focus on what ongoing engagement allows us to produce. Just hosting online meetings, courses, or webinars does not allow people to benefit from what a SLS has to offer.

Alex: How so?

Diane: Let me share another example from our research: SLSs for women leaders. Some of the meetings were educational and experts would share their knowledge and experience, just like a webinar or a workshop; other meetings were smaller groups where leaders reflected on and shared how they applied what they had learned and the outcomes they achieved. Which brings us our next two values: applied and realized. But as you might expect, some changes are more easily applied than others; some will need enabling value from an organizational level. Of course, negotiating the strategies that are worthy of investment and implementation takes time, and is not likely to get done with only one meeting. The applied and realized values for change require ongoing strategic conversations between people from various levels within an organization or system (e.g., coach developers, sport administrators, funders, athletes, volunteers).

Alex: And could you share the actual outcomes of this?

Diane: Absolutely. One sport association implemented a policy (applied and enabling value) requiring a woman coach on the bench for all female teams. Thus, female athletes benefited from the presence of a female role model (realized value). Moreover, organizations had to invest in ensuring these coaches had appropriate coach training (strategic value). A women’s only course was then designed (enabling value) and was successfully run several times during the project (applied and realized value). As you can see, one strategy can result in diverse types of value, creating a domino effect.

Alex: Domino effect! So, we could see the steps to achieving our strategic goals as domino pieces.

Diane: That’s a great metaphor, and by using the value creation framework it would be easier to inform your domino pieces, or actions, and assess their impact. This assessment, or paying attention to the effects of participating in a SLS, can be formal or informal. While the following examples are more structured, simple methods such as appointing one or two participants to carry out check-ins and check-outs at all gatherings can also assess created value, especially if there is a follow-up with participants to track their value stories. Some measures of success are quantifiable, such as the number of coaches involved in a program – much of this sort of data is collected already by organizations. In our research, we have also used assessment tools such as surveys, interviews, and focus groups to assess value. Surveys are helpful for getting ratings on the usefulness of information received in a SLS. Interviews and focus groups are used to get participants to reflect on their experience participating in the SLS. For example, you can ask questions about how their participation has changed the way they practice, or the influence they might have in their organization. You can ask for specific stories about something they learned or changed, and how that came about. These stories capture activities (immediate value), outputs (potential value), applications (applied value), outcomes (realized value), and new definitions of success (transformative value).

Alex: Should projects aim for creating value in every cycle?

Diane: The Value Creation Framework does not rank the values on importance, and not all projects will support value creation in all of the cycles. What’s more, value is in the eye of the beholder – the experiences of one participant, might not be the same as another.

Alex: It is more complex than I anticipated.

Diane: Yes. Organizations are often unaware of the amount of work it takes to lead an SLS. We are calling this work “social learning leadership.” The research around communities of practice suggests that without leadership, initiatives will not continue or will drift into meetings with no specific value to the practitioners. The work of social learning leaders includes:

Engaging participants to identify their learning priorities;
Organizing learning opportunities;
Holding strategic conversations when needed; and
Paying attention to the value being created, or not, and helping participants reconfigure the space to better enable positive outcomes.

Alex: That’s sounds like an important role. What sort of skills does a social learning leader need?

Diane: Well, first off, the role of social learning leader can be shared within your group, with different individuals leading distinct aspects of the role – whether, communication, evaluation, planning/hosting, networking. A social learning leader should be someone familiar with your context but not necessarily an expert in your sport. They need to do their homework and find out who knows what in the context. Furthermore, a social learning leader needs to understand the nuts and bolts of the value creation framework.

To help you understand this role, I am going to share a deck of reflective cards (see Figure 1) that serve as a reminder of the eight values and what types of data we should pay attention to when framing and assessing a social learning space. The idea behind these cards is for social learning leaders to keep them easily accessible and check them regularly to help reflect on the state of your SLS. For example, you may have a clear idea of your aspirations – the change you would like to see. Here you would start with the realized value card. From there, working within your social learning space, you would explore what must be in place to achieve that realized value. So, you might then consider what potential and immediate value need to occur, and whether there are strategic and/or enabling values that should be considered. Or, you may have an example of realized value from another context that you decide to present to our SLS, at which point it may become potential value for your SLS. The act of using the value cards to reflect on SLS is not a one-off activity. It should be conducted throughout your project. In this way, assessing value and framing activities are intertwining processes.

Figure 1. A deck of value creation reflective cards

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Alex: That’s very helpful. Where should I start?

Diane: Having appointed (and trained if necessary) your social learning leader(s), here are a few simple steps that could make your journey smoother. First, find others who want to make a difference. Our research shows that it is not that hard to find them. You could start with an issue or gap that really resonates with you, or bring people together and ask what difference they want to make. Nothing brings people together better than a reason that keeps them awake at night. For instance, the core purpose of the social learning space examples I spoke about earlier were a passion to enhance sport for people with disabilities, and the quest for gender equity in sport. Moving forward on your desire to address girls’ drop out is a great place to start!

Second, encourage people from different levels of your organization or community to join. More often than not, complex issues cannot be effectively solved by a single individual or organization, but demand a collaborative effort to overcome. For example, the Alberta Women in Sport Leadership project brought together individuals from the Coaching Association of Canada, six mentors with connections across the nation and province, sport leaders from 12 provincial sport organizations, as well as numerous individuals working at the provincial and club levels. What is important here is to encourage the participation of people with different backgrounds and perspectives. Respectful and well managed divergence, not consensus, moves a SLS forward.

Alex: How are we sure we’re finding the best way to handle these complex challenges? Or is there one best way of doing things?

Diane: That’s such a great question! What countless studies have proposed is there are many ways of doing things. Creativity, emotional intelligence, and collaboration are being treated as major competences for the 21^st Century. There is a lot of uncertainty with many of the complex challenges we face, and that’s okay. Recognizing our uncertainty leads us to the third step on the journey to create an SLS: paying attention to change at the individual, group and organizational levels. Let me again share some examples from our research. At the individual level, some of our participant coaches, who worked in isolated areas of the country, started to feel more confident as they engaged with other coaches through the SLS. At the group level, legitimacy was given to the social learning space when the women sport leaders presented at a provincial sport conference, discussing the benefits of participating in the initiative and helping to promote gender equity. At the level of organizational change, many policies were implemented as a result of the work in the SLS. For instance, Curling Canada now invites developmental coaches to attend training camps for NextGen athletes, increasing social learning opportunities among coaches, athletes, and integrated support teams.

Alex: I see. Is there anything else I need to consider?

Diane: Yes. Before I give you my last few words of advice, let me point out that this conversation is an example of “potential value” for you, Alex – you can take the advice from this conversation and try applying it to the issue of girls’ dropout in your organization. But back to my last tips, and this may seem obvious: keep in mind that nurturing a community of practice or other social learning space is all about people interacting in a non-judgmental, ego-free environment. This requires work! A few small but important things can help:

Encourage one-on-one, or small group interactions, whetherin person or online;
Hold face-to-face meetings when appropriate, based on public health restrictions – consider planning these in conjunction with scheduled events, such as competitions or AGMs; and
Make appropriate use of break-out rooms during in-person or virtual gatherings to support engagement, time for reflection, and small group discussion. Nurture online interactions and be sure to provide technical support for each participant who needs it. This may require individual tech checks ahead of scheduled meetings.

These opportunities for people to interact with other participants in the SLS make it easier to develop relationships and therefore trust among the group. And trust is essential for an effective SLS. Alex – I can’t wait to hear more about your SLS, and the value it creates for the participants and your organization!

Conclusion

Appropriately framed and supported, social learning spaces can be used by any organization or group caring to make a difference in professional development, diversity and inclusion, or any initiative for growth. A social learning space is a learning tool for the 21^st Century because it requires people to work collaboratively to co-create innovations; it brings them to places where they have not yet been in terms of their practices. In this way, it is agile.

Interested in learning more? Watch Diane’s presentation on Promoting and Assessing Social Learning in parasport coaches and organizations, presented at the 2020 Sport Canada Research Initiative Conference.

Paradoxically, Masters sport is equally celebrated and ignored. Masters athletes are celebrated because they are motivated, goal-oriented, and determined to thrive at ages when sport participation has traditionally waned – they defeat stereotypes and allow us to rethink possibilities. Yet Masters athletes (MAs) can also be an “after-thought” in sport organizations, receiving scarce attention. Our pan-Canadian research team has been exploring this paradox and its implications during the past decade. We commend researchers that came before us, starting in the 1980s, who studied the physiological implications of sport participation into older age. However, we noted the relative lack of attention to social and psychological motives of MAs and the needs of adults seeking ways to be active in sport for life, leading us to explore how MAs are different than other athletes and what this means for sport programmers and coaches.

Masters sport is advertised and organized specifically for adults who are beyond the typical age of peak performance. Typically, Masters sports cater to athletes beginning at age 35 (e.g., athletics, cycling), although some begin as young as 18 (gymnastics, artistic skating) or 25 (swimming). It is rule-governed and competitive. MAs, by definition, report having a regular pattern of practice/training in advance of competitions, and the majority in individual sports like track and field and swimming have dedicated coaches. They range in serious-mindedness, from the recreationally competitive who devote two to six hours weekly to their sport, to those who compete in national and international events and devote upwards of 10 hours weekly.

Recently, various Canadian and international sport organizations have reached out to us and asked for evidence-based insight to help support their Masters sports programs. The result has been increasing dialogue between researchers and practitioners on how to enhance a Quality Masters Sport Experience, and about unique approaches to organizing and coaching middle-aged and older adults in sport. This article provides an overview of what we have learned about programming for enhancing MAs’ sport experiences, focused on themes that have resonated with sport programmers and coaches in our recent webinars. We specifically discuss the valuable role of a coach and adult-tailored coaching approaches, and the emergence of practical tools for coaches to hone these approaches in their craft.

Quality Masters sport experience

Asking sport programmers and coaches to reflect on characteristics of a Quality Sport Experience is a great way to initiate dialogue about MAs. During webinars and other learning sessions with various sport organizations, we asked, “what do you believe are the hallmarks of an adult athletic experience that has integrity, is worthy of investment, and likely to generate fulsome benefits for participants?”. This question really gets coaches and programmers talking, causing them to reflect on the needs of MAs, which are often different than those of youth, adolescent, or younger high-performance athletes. Although answers can be quite individualized, respondents commonly share perspectives that fit into several identifiable themes based in research in the domain. In Table 1, we present these themes as the seven Hallmarks of a Quality Masters Sport Experience. These hallmarks are derived from our interpretation of a broad body of evidence on Masters sport, including work on the psychology of the MA (Young, 2011; Young, Callary & Rathwell, 2018), profiling of MAs (Larson, Young, McHugh & Rodgers, 2020; Rathwell, Callary & Young, 2015), and reviews dedicated to coaching MAs (Callary & Young, 2020). The table includes descriptions of each hallmark, and questions to help coaches think through these important considerations.

Table 1: Hallmarks of a quality Masters sport experience

	Hallmark	Example Questions for Coaches to Ponder
Meaningful Competition	MAs have multifaceted perspectives on competition, and competitions provide a framing that can enrich sport activity.	Do you emphasize the opportunity for MAs to meaningfully translate their hard work in training to competition? To use lessons from competition to enhance training? Do you motivate MAs to self-compete, to better their own standards? Do you set up opportunities for MAs to engage in competitive activities during practice?
Mastery	MAs derive feelings of competency when they fulfill goals related to learning, improving, and giving effort.	Do you set up progressions that become increasingly more complex over time, and increasingly demand more effort? Do you encourage MAs to monitor, reflect upon, identify, and celebrate instances of mastery? Do you set up instances where MAs persevere to eventually overcome a skill acquisition barrier?
Testing and Assessing Oneself	MAs like to push themselves to learn or refine facets of sport and appreciate being held to account for outcomes.	Do you set up opportunities for MAs to test themselves on criteria for sport skills? Do you collaborate on criteria for assessment with MAs? At an agreed difficulty level? Do your MAs have opportunities to succeed and fall short in trials? Do they get retests, and suitable training so they can improve?
Quality Relationships	MAs are motivated to search for, and benefit from, social connections, and a sense of belonging among relatable people.	Does your club have a close-knit climate where MAs feel they belong to something special? How do norms in your club encourage MAs to share in the “good times”? Do you show an interest in each MA? How do you connect on sport and non-sport matters?
Fun and Fitness	MAs want to have a good time and enjoy the idea of being an athlete, while being supported by a program that gets them in great shape.	Does your program make MAs fitter using “sporty” approaches that differ from exercise/gym routines? Do your MAs experience an “adult sporting lifestyle”? Which aspects of your program and/or coaching allow participants to call themselves “athletes”? Do you know which aspects of your program MAs find most enjoyable? Do you sufficiently plan for them?
Intellectual Stimulation	MAs are inherently interested in obtaining knowledge about their activities and becoming a “student of their sport” is rewarding.	Do you know which aspects of your program MAs find most informative? Do you sufficiently plan for them? How do you make your adults smarter for when they do things on their own? Do you use approaches that challenge MAs on what they don’t know, in ways that motivate them to learn?
Feeling Empowered	MAs want to feel their sport pursuits stem from their decisions, informed by collaborations.	Do MAs show pride in their decisions to commit to sport? How do you encourage this? Do you know which aspects of your program and/or coaching give MAs self-direction? Do you sufficiently plan for them? Is your decision making and practice planning informed by two-way communication with MAs?
Feeling Validated	MAs need to feel that their investments in sport are being reciprocated and legitimized by the quality of practice/programming and coaching they receive.	Do your athletes believe that they are getting value for their money? Does your coaching respect that busy adults have dedicated their little free leisure time to your practices? Is your coaching of sufficient quality to legitimize their time away from other activities, including family time?

We have found that coaches without experience in Masters sport typically assume MAs are either engaged to fulfill their social needs, or are hard-nosed enthusiasts looking to satisfy a quench for competition. Our Hallmarks of a Quality Masters Sport Experience allow for a multidimensional interpretation, recognizing the remarkable diversity of MAs’ motives, backgrounds, and experiences, while understanding their unique realities in adulthood. Reflecting on Table 1 encourages practitioners to think in new ways about MAs and to think broadly about what is different with Masters cohorts.

What’s different about coaching adults? Their unique psychosocial needs

In 2015, we interviewed Masters swimmers from community clubs in Ontario. Swimmers were asked about their wants, needs and preferences from coaches in their sport. The most important finding was the vast benefits they attributed to having a coach – in essence, they believed that without a coach, their involvement would simply be fitness or exercise. They described instances where their coach enhanced their confidence, skill set, process of learning, lifestyle habits, and shaped a climate that met their social affiliation needs (Callary, Rathwell & Young, 2015). Masters coaches can be exceptional resources who embody the “value” in organized sport programming. By studying the preferences of MAs and how they are satisfied through the approaches of coaches, sport researchers have begun to understand effective Masters coaching. Moreover, in sports like golf where instructors are often sub-contractors who run their own enterprise, a better understanding of how to effectively coach adults enhances “entrepreneurial value.”

Through research with Masters swimmers, several areas of importance in Masters coaching were identified (Callary et al., 2015), including:

Coaches’ professional development, personal attributes and knowledge – Effective coaches let it be known to their MAs they are continually invest in coaching education and gathering new coaching resources. MAs see this as a sign that their coach is credible, cares, and is immersed in efforts to improve.
Instructional behaviors and feedback delivery – Effective coaches know which athletes prefer technical correction and being pushed in front of others, and which athletes do not. There is great variability in the types of feedback to which each MA will respond.
Planning of practices and programs – Effective coaches are remarkably efficient managers of practice time. They justify adults’ presence at practice with well-structured and organized activities, but also collaborate on aspects of flexible programming to allow adults to fit other training in on their own terms. Effective coaches motivate or “ready” MAs to train, but also know when to accommodate MAs’ fluctuations in readiness.
Preparation of and interaction with athletes around competitions – Effective coaches use upcoming competitions to contextualize the technical or strategic aspects that individual MAs need to work on in training.

Research has shown that these areas of coaching can be very different when working with MAs, compared to other cohorts. This has been established in swimming (Callary, Rathwell, & Young, 2017; Ferrari, Bloom, Gilbert & Caron, 2017), sprint canoe and kayak (MacLellan, Callary & Young, 2018), and dragonboat (Callary, Rathwell, MacLellan & Young, 2015), and with testimonials from coaches about the unique nuances of working with adults in sports as varied as touch rugby, soccer, alpine skiing, artistic skating, and racewalking (Callary, Young & Rathwell, 2021).

In particular, the research indicates that the psychosocial skills of coaching – the “relational or people skills” – need to be different when coaching MAs. Literature certainly exists about the biophysical, physiological, and injury risk considerations associated with coaching MAs. However, our emerging body of research advocates for fulsome consideration of psychosocial skills that are essential for establishing quality interactions, social connections, trust and belief in collaboration, and a sense of partnership (Callary, Currie & Young, 2020). Altogether, coaches who effectively consider the relational nuances for how to coach matured adult athletes are instrumental in delivering a Quality Masters Sport Experience.

Adult-oriented coaching approaches

One of the critical aspects of relational coaching in Masters sport is the use of adult-oriented coaching approaches. Adult-oriented approaches consider the nuances of organizing, leading, instructing, and collaborating with MAs. These approaches respect adults’ matured self-concept and how it influences their approach to learning, such as their enhanced inquisitiveness and tendencies to want to frame sport challenges in personally meaningful ways (see MacLellan, Callary & Young, 2019). Over the past four years, we have established five essential approaches to adult-oriented coaching and developed an Adult-Oriented Sport Coaching Survey (AOSCS; Rathwell, Young, Callary, Motz, Hoffmann & Currie, 2020) to help coaches self-assess these approaches in their practice. There is also a corresponding athlete version of the AOSCS that allows MAs to rate how frequently they experience adult-oriented approaches from their coaches. Table 2 defines and describes each of these five approaches. The AOSCS provides a valuable tool for coach learning and reflection, which can be used to enhance coach development and performance. Within our webinars, coaches have been reflecting on themes found within the AOSCS and considering how they apply to their coaching philosophy. Moreover, coaches can be taught how to track their AOSCS scores (globally, and for each of the approaches) across the season. Coaches can also use scores derived from the athlete version of the AOSCS to receive developmental feedback based on their athletes’ experiences. Data from MAs’ surveys can be considered alongside the coach’s self-report data to identify any incongruencies, such as when the coach feels that they are using an adult-oriented approach but it is not being perceived by their athletes. Coaches can use the combined data to create their own profile for how they are using each of the five approaches, which ones are being “received” by athletes, and how these relationships change over time. Such a process allows coaches to reflect on strengths, weaknesses, congruencies, and changes related to the relational component of their coaching practice.

Table 2: The five adult-oriented sport coaching approaches

	Definition of Adult-Oriented Approach:
Considering the Individuality of Athletes	How a coach considers and tailors their approach to each MA’s experiences and motives in the planning, organization, and delivery of practice
Framing Learning Situations	How a coach frames learning situations for their MAs through self-discovery, problem-based scenarios, modeling, and assessments
Imparting Coaching Knowledge	How a coach shares their own relevant athletic experience, coaching knowledge, and professional coaching development
Respecting Preferences for Effort, Accountability and Feedback	How a coach adapts their approach to consider how each MA wishes to be held accountable for working hard and giving effort, and how each MA wishes to receive feedback at practice
Creating Personalized Programming	How a coach considers and tailors aspects of scheduling (practices and competitions), season-long programming, and support at competitions, to a MA’s needs and abilities

Realizing positive outcomes

Coaches of MAs can apply the five coaching approaches organically – using them in teachable moments or opportune instances, based on need, or can intentionally plan for their use. Our recent research found that by applying all five AOSCS approaches across a season, coaches were able to enhance positive outcomes. This included enhancing their personal relationships with their athletes, and satisfying their athletes’ needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Coaches’ use of AOSCS approaches was also significantly and positively related to the degree to which MAs reported commitment to, and liking of, their sport experience (Motz, Rathwell, Young, Callary, Hoffmann, & Currie, 2019). In light of the finding that AOSCS approaches are positively associated with MAs’ ratings for positive sport outcomes, we believe the AOSCS can be a tool for coach self-assessment that may foster an empowering environment and can set a precedence for discussion about how coaching approaches meet MAs’ wants and needs. The use of AOSCS surveys in webinars and workshops, perhaps in concert with coach education developers (Callary & Young, 2020), can draw coaches’ attention to areas to nuance their approaches with adults.

Call to Action: Developing quality Masters sport experiences

The evidence-based research that has amounted in recent years, and coaches’ recent responses to this information at webinars, suggests there are real differences between coaching MAs and younger athletes. Undoubtedly, there are intrapersonal, interpersonal and professional knowledges associated generically with coaching all different cohorts, but clearly there are Masters-specific nuances to coaching knowledge and practice that should be given due deliberation if we are to satisfy the Hallmarks of a Quality Masters Sport Experience.

The sport organizations with which we have had the pleasure to interact are asking for information on how to coach effectively within the Masters context. Sport organizations are responding to a need, likely due to the prospect of a growing Masters participant base. This is an opportune time to advance more systematic and evidence-based approaches to Masters sport programming and coach development. It is overdue. When we explored sources of learning to coach MAs, coaches reported much trial and error experimentation, many had never considered the need to develop their knowledge on relational coaching of adults, and almost none had received any coach education on the topic (Callary, Rathwell & Young, 2018). There clearly was a knowledge gap. We are optimistic that sport programmers want to know more about developing adult-oriented coaching practices and see great opportunities in encouraging coaches’ development of interpersonal and intrapersonal competencies (not only their knowledge of sport sciences and sport-specific skills) for the Masters cohort.

Recommended resources

Coaching Masters Athletes (coming April 2021) – A foundational textbook resource for all coaches and student coaches who are, or who plan to be, working with Masters athletes.

www.coachingmastersathletes.com – Houses a catalogue of the authors’ work, infographics relating to evidence-based practice, information on the AOSCS tools, and home of the Coaching Masters Athletes Research Network.

If you have been involved in the coaching or administrative side of competitive sport, chances are you have seen athletes experience emotionally difficult setbacks. These setbacks can range from devastating performance failures (e.g., “choking” during an important competition), to facing harsh, negative evaluations by others (e.g., spectators, teammates, competitors, parents) and/or themselves (the self-critic is often very cruel). For some athletes, these types of setbacks can offer an opportunity for personal growth. For others, without sufficient coping resources, setbacks can negatively impact athletes’ wellbeing and/or sour their overall sport experience, putting them at risk of dropping out from sport altogether. Fortunately, self-compassion is steadily gaining traction as a personal resource that athletes can use to help navigate setbacks experienced in sport in a healthy and positive way (e.g., Mosewich et al., 2011; Reis et al., 2015; Wilson et al., 2019).

What is self-compassion?

Self-compassion requires an awareness of personal suffering and a desire to help oneself through an emotionally difficult time. Dr. Kristin Neff (2003) describes self-compassion as having three components:

Self-kindness – treating oneself with warmth and understanding in the face of failure or difficult experiences;
Common humanity – understanding that we are all part of the greater human condition and that everyone goes through difficult times; and
Mindfulness – includes moment-to-moment awareness, and taking a more objective, rational approach to negative situations rather than overidentifying with them too strongly or ignoring them.

Unlike self-esteem, which requires positive self-evaluation in reference to others in order to feel good about oneself, self-compassion features an acceptance of one’s own flaws and shortcomings, and thereby, as Neff proposed, emphasizes a positive, supportive self-attitude and approach to life. Notably, self-compassion is related to overall wellbeing and decreased negative emotions, such as shame, in a variety of populations (e.g., university students, older adults; Allen, Goldwasser, & Leary, 2012; Johnson & O’Brien, 2013; Leary et al., 2007), and there is growing evidence of its benefits for athletes.

The role of self-compassion in sport

Within the past decade, self-compassion has been studied in the context of sport largely as a tool to help athletes cope or deal with the emotionally challenging setbacks or obstacles they encounter. Especially when outside support networks are limited or unavailable to athletes, self-compassion might be particularly useful to help athletes overcome a variety of setbacks in adaptive, healthy ways. For this article, we focus on links between self-compassion and two types of setbacks because of their relevance to practitioners who work with athletes: (a) injury and (b) negative evaluations and sport-based performance failures.

Injury

Experiencing injury is a significant setback faced by almost all athletes at some point in their careers. Sometimes sport injuries are minor, and athletes miss little to no time from training, practice, and competition. Other times, sport injuries are more severe, causing athletes to miss significant time in sport. In these cases, even when athletes do return to sport following injury, they may never (or significantly struggle to) return to the same level of performance. Still other times, sport injuries effectively end the sporting careers of athletes, which can be absolutely devastating and extremely difficult to experience. The key point is that injury can be an emotionally difficult setback for athletes.

The good news is that there is growing evidence that self-compassion can help athletes better manage the negative emotions they experience due to injury. By reducing athletes’ anxiety, worry, and avoidance coping strategies in response to injury, self-compassion can enable athletes to focus on healthier, more proactive ways of moving forward with recovery (e.g., adaptive coping, acceptance), particularly as an alternative to ruminating or dwelling on the injury (Huysmans & Clement, 2017). Self-compassion may even reduce injury occurrence by decreasing athletes’ physiological activation to stress and facilitating their ability to focus on relevant cues when on the field, court, or ice (Huysmans & Clement, 2017).

Although the benefits of self-compassion in the context of injury are not fully known, it seems to offer a way for athletes to reduce some of the negative emotions experienced due to sport injury (e.g., shame, humiliation), which might make them more driven to overcome and persevere through injury-based adversity (Wilson et al., 2019). To highlight this point, research coming out of our lab at the University of Saskatchewan, led by Karissa Johnson as part of her graduate thesis, has recently shown that self-compassionate athletes rehabilitating from injury tend to be more mentally tough, perceive having more coping resources, and experience less self-criticism. Importantly, Karissa’s research also shows that self-compassion might allow injured athletes access to a healthier version of mental toughness, characterized by acceptance and wise actions, as opposed to a mental toughness characterized by making poor decisions to push through injury in unhealthy ways.

Negative evaluations and performance failures

It would be rare to work with an athlete who hasn’t felt they made a mistake or failed in sport at some point, and often in critical moments. Similar to injury, mistakes and failures are part of sport, and like injury, they can be an emotionally difficult setback for athletes. Whether it be feeling responsible for a loss due to a missed free throw in a high school basketball game or missing a soccer penalty kick at the World Cup, athletes are oftentimes harshly evaluated or judged by others and themselves. Sometimes it is teammates, competitors, coaches, and parents who are responsible for providing negative, sometimes debilitating feedback, to athletes. Other times, athletes are their own biggest critics, pointing the finger solely at themselves when things go wrong. In many cases, the negative evaluations come from multiple sources.

Regardless of the source(s) of negative evaluation, the level of competition, and magnitude of the mistake or failure, athletes are highly susceptible to emotional suffering that stems from harsh evaluations of their sport performance (Mosewich et al., 2011). Research has shown that athletes experience a variety of maladaptive emotions (e.g., shame, embarrassment, humiliation) and thoughts (e.g., “I am worthless”) when they make mistakes or fail (Reis et al., 2015), while also engaging in self-criticism and self-punishment (Ceccarelli et al., 2019). More generally, performance failures in sport can lead to decreased mental health, a diminished sense of self, and emotional distress (Ceccarelli et al., 2019; Mosewich, Crocker, & Kowalski, 2014).

Similar to its positive impact in helping athletes deal with injury, self-compassion seems to be an effective resource for athletes experiencing difficult emotions resulting from failure and evaluation. By enabling athletes to treat themselves less harshly and put sport failures or mistakes in perspective, self-compassion promotes adaptive coping and a healthier stress response, both psychologically (e.g., viewing current shortcomings as changeable and addressable) and physiologically (e.g., appropriate heart rate response to stress) (Ceccarelli et al., 2019). Put another way, self-compassion helps athletes get through difficult experiences in sport, such as injury and performance failures (and corresponding negative evaluations), in a way that doesn’t require dwelling on them or overidentifying with the setback, leading to a quicker recovery and a more positive overall sport experience.

Strategies to enhance self-compassion

One approach to increase self-compassion amongst athletes is through intervention. For example, Dr. Amber Mosewich and her colleagues developed a one-week sport self-compassion intervention, which effectively enhanced self-compassion levels in highly self-critical women athletes while also decreasing rumination and self-criticism (Mosewich et al., 2013). The intervention was comprised of an initial in-person educational component and a self-compassionate writing exercise, followed by a series of self-compassion writing modules that athletes completed online over the course of seven days. The in-person component of the intervention provided a brief explanation of self-compassion and discussion of relevant findings from self-compassion research (e.g., self-compassion does not promote complacency or passivity; rather, practicing self-compassion is an adaptive, healthy way to navigate challenges). After the 10-minute educational session, the athletes were asked to think about and write a description of a recalled negative event in sport that had happened to them within the past 10 days. They were then given prompts to write about how they could respond to that scenario, centered on the three core elements of self-compassion (i.e., self-kindness, common humanity, mindfulness). This writing exercise provided the athletes with an opportunity to practice self-compassionate writing in advance of the take-home component of the intervention, which featured five writing tasks/modules. As two examples of the writing exercises, they were asked to respond to their negative event in sport by (a) writing a paragraph “expressing understanding, kindness, and concern to yourself…as if you are communicating to a close friend in the same situation” (i.e., self-kindness) and (b) listing “ways in which other people experience similar events” (i.e., common humanity).

In an applied study, Rodriguez and Ebbeck (2015) implemented self-compassion strategies with women gymnasts and their coaches. Through weekly or bi-weekly meetings amongst the gymnasts, coaches, and an external sport psychology consultant, gymnasts engaged in activities that were designed to enhance self-compassion. For example, the gymnasts were asked to write about how they would treat a teammate when the teammate felt really bad about herself and struggled during practice or competition. They also integrated self-compassion breaks into their training routines, which involved visualizing a stressful scenario in gymnastics before developing their own self-compassionate response cues rooted in self-kindness, common humanity, and mindfulness. This was designed to help them develop their skills to manage future situations in healthier ways. A particularly unique component of the study involved the gymnasts selecting different coloured beads to indicate when they had demonstrated positive self-talk and affirmation compared to when they had demonstrated negative self-talk or self-criticism. The gymnasts were also encouraged to think of self-compassion as an approach to prevent “suffering,” which was likened to other unfavourable or adverse outcomes (e.g., becoming out of shape during the off-season could be prevented by “keeping up with off-season conditioning and maintaining healthy eating”). To counter the notion that self-compassion is “self-coddling,” a concern we discuss in more detail in the next section, the gymnasts were asked questions that helped put the use of self-compassion in a balanced perspective (e.g., “Would you withhold water from yourself during your 4-hour practice to be tough on yourself?”).

Barriers to self-compassion and potential solutions

Despite the potential of self-compassion as a resource to help athletes navigate setbacks and emotionally difficult experiences in sport, there are challenges to its widespread application. One barrier is a belief amongst some athletes that self-compassion might present a roadblock to achieving elite status (Sutherland et al., 2014). Specifically, some women athletes have explained that they felt it was necessary to be self-critical of their own poor performances in sport and their sport-based failures to learn from them and get better as athletes, and that self-compassion represented a mindset that encouraged them to let themselves off the hook too easily. Similarly, in a recent study with men athletes conducted by our research team, some of the men explained that when they heard the term “self-compassion” they immediately thought it was “soft” – a barrier to self-compassion in its own right – and that it would encourage them to be “too easy” on themselves. They also noted that viewing their poor performances and sport failures with a harsh, self-critical lens was an essential part of the process that would lead them to improved performances in the future. While such claims are largely unfounded – self-compassion has in fact been shown to be positively related to thriving in sport (Ferguson et al., 2014) and is counter to self-indulgence and deterred motivation (Gilbert et al., 2011) – they represent a challenge to the promotion and practice of self-compassion amongst athletes. Researchers are currently exploring alternative language surrounding “self-compassion” as a way to help remove the “soft” connotation that some people connect with the term. For example, Neff and Germer (2018) introduced the “yin” and “yang” of self-compassion, acknowledging the traditionally feminine “yin” side of self-compassion with the terms “comforting,” “soothing,” and “validating;” and the traditionally masculine “yang” side of self-compassion with the terms “protecting,” “providing,” and “motivating.”

Some athletes’ beliefs that self-compassion might lead to diminished performance expectations and results also sheds light on another potential barrier to the widespread impact of self-compassion in the sporting world – inadequate understanding of the construct. In our research with men athletes, despite them initially suggesting that self-compassion might lead to complacency, the men went on to explain that an initial lack of education about self-compassion led to their negative views. After learning about self-compassion, the men explained that their initial inclinations to reject self-compassion were rooted in a misconception of what it actually is. They emphasized that education and training is an essential component when promoting self-compassion to other athletes. The men elaborated that athletes need to not only become aware of self-compassion, they need to know that self-compassion can help them overcome adversity in sport, leading to improved performance by learning from mistakes and failures, rather than dwelling on them.

In addition to some athletes’ negative or tepid views towards self-compassion, potentially stemming from inadequate understanding, another current barrier to its widespread practice in the sporting world is likely COVID-19. Specifically, some in-person strategies previously used to increase self-compassion awareness and knowledge, and overall self-compassion levels amongst athletes, like introductory educational components (e.g., Mosewich et al., 2013) and group activities (e.g., Rodriguez & Ebbeck, 2015), are more challenging with COVID-19 restrictions. Accordingly, in the current sport landscape, online self-compassion tools, workshops, tutorials, and interventions are likely the only options available. Fortunately, the vast improvement of technology in recent years has made the online design and delivery of approaches to enhance self-compassion feasible and potentially as effective as in-person approaches. For instance, the education component of Mosewich et al.’s (2013) intervention could probably be delivered online fairly seamlessly, integrating with the main writing interventions that were already online. As well, group activities, including meetings between coaches, athletes, mental performance consultants, and sport psychologists, could occur through online video calls. Neff’s online self-compassion meditations and exercises (www.self-compassion.org) are readily available to anyone who visits her website, making it easy for coaches and sport administrators to point athletes in the right direction.

Gender and self-compassion in sport

The vast majority of self-compassion research with athletes to date has been with women athletes. However, our recent research has a growing focus on men athletes and suggests that self-compassion levels depend on athletes’ individual representation of masculinity (Reis et al., 2019). Specifically, men athletes who aligned with a more traditional version of masculinity (i.e., emphasis on traditional masculine norms like aggression, violence, and self-reliance; Parent & Moradi, 2009) had lower levels of self-compassion than men athletes who aligned with a more contemporary, accepting version of masculinity (i.e., inclusive masculinity, where men see all representations of masculinity on an equal plane; Anderson, 2005).

While women athletes face their own set of unique challenges in sport (e.g., a paradox between fulfilling societal expectations of appearance and expectations of performance), so too do men athletes (e.g., emasculation in the form of subordination and/or marginalization stemming from failure to meet performance-based expectations of men in sport, like [failure to] possess speed and strength; Anderson & McGuire, 2010). This matters in the context of self-compassion in sport for the following reasons: (a) it is difficult to know whether self-compassion can help men athletes manage and cope with their unique difficult experiences in sport, and (b) some men athletes might be particularly hesitant to accept/embrace/practice self-compassion, because of potential threats to their masculinity.

In our research with men athletes, they discussed how masculinity was the root cause of many of their recalled emotionally difficult experiences in sport. For example, they described societal pressures and expectations to always perform at high levels and to play through injury, with coaches yelling “man up” from the sidelines. Interestingly, some men explained that refusing to succumb to masculinity-rooted pressures that might cause them harm was itself a masculine quality, and that self-compassion represented masculinity by enabling them to demonstrate mental strength by taking care of themselves. While this line of thinking is encouraging for the implementation and practice of self-compassion amongst men athletes, it would be presumptive to believe that all or even most men athletes feel the same way. However, we are hopeful that the current and future generations of men athletes might gravitate more and more to what seems to be an inclusive representation of masculinity, and one that conceptually aligns with self-compassion.

Take-away message

Self-compassion research in sport has grown significantly over the past decade. More and more athletes are experiencing the benefits of self-compassion, particularly as a way to manage and overcome sport-specific setbacks. Though much of the self-compassion research to date focuses on women athletes or a combination of women athletes and men athletes, self-compassion research with a focus on men athletes is starting to surface in the literature, with encouraging results. The potential of self-compassion is fairly untapped, considering it is relatively new to sport-specific research; but with more education and the possibility of training athletes, coaches, and sport administrators through self-compassion workshops, tutorials, seminars, and interventions, there is much to be gained for athletes and those who support them. Additionally, given the current restrictions resulting from COVID-19 that limit in-person interactions, it might be helpful for self-compassion practitioners to emphasize the development and delivery of online approaches to enhance self-compassion in athletes.

5 strategies to promote self-compassion to athletes

Explain to athletes that self-compassion has been linked to faster recovery from setbacks in sport, which can lead to improved performance.
When you see an athlete facing a setback, encourage them to think about what they would say to a friend experiencing a similar situation.
Have athletes tell you about other athletes who might have experienced similar events.
For a period of 10 days, have your athletes keep track of “beads” electronically. When they engage in positive self-talk or affirmation, they add a green bead. When they engage in negative self-talk or self-criticism, they add a red bead.
Have athletes try a guided self-compassion meditation, such as the Compassionate Body Scan, which is available for free on Kristin Neff’s website (www.self-compassion.org).

To support the identification and development of future Olympians and Paralympians, two Canadian programs have been developed to fuel the Canadian pipeline of future hopefuls. RBC Training Ground and the Canadian Paralympic Committee’s Paralympian Search are athlete identification programs designed to assess participant aptitudes in various sports, and connect athletes with sport opportunities and development pathways to support their podium dreams. SIRC sat down with Kurt Innes, CSI Pacific’s Director of Performance Solutions, and RBC Training Ground Technical Lead, and Jenny Davey, CPC’s Manager, Paralympic Pathways, to learn more about the programs, explore the role of research in their initial and ongoing development, and discuss the inevitable impact of COVID-19.

SIRC: Kurt, you were involved in the early origins of RBC Training Ground and Paralympian Search. Take us back to the early days.

Kurt Innes: The Canadian Olympic Committee (COC) and Canadian Paralympic Committee’s (CPC) athlete Identification programs are based on research (e.g. Abbott & Collins, 2004; Lum et al., 2020; Sayers et al., 1999; Vaeyens et al., 2008) and are enhancements of previous Canadian programs such as SportFit, Own the Podium’s pre-2010 work within sports like Speed Skating, and CSI Pacific’s PODIUM SEARCH™. PODIUM SEARCH was designed as a BC-based athlete identification and standardized fitness-testing program for able-bodied and Para athletes. The program supported national and provincial/territorial sport organizations’ athlete identification programs in BC through a collaborative and efficient delivery model thereby supporting athletes to identify transferable physical abilities across multiple sports. A regional delivery approach allowed greater and more efficient access to testing and monitoring at low or no cost for athletes in their home communities; and reduced the need for sport organizations to organize and staff talent identification/recruitment sessions on their own, thus saving administrative and logistical expenses. In 2016, the program was scaled up and expanded into two distinct National programs, across the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute (COPSI) Network – one focused on Olympic sport under the leadership of the Canadian Olympic Committee with corporate sponsor RBC; and one for Para sport, led by the CPC.

SIRC: Both programs are delivered as one day events, hosted in communities across the country. Tell me who can participate, and what they can expect from the program.

Kurt: RBC Training Ground is open to athletes aged 14 to 25 from all sport backgrounds. 14 was selected as our entry point to reflect the average age (boys and girls) when adolescents have finished their growth spurt (adolescent peak height velocity) and most of their physical growth has stabilized. At the event, athletes participate in a series of basic field tests measuring anthropometry (height, weight, arm span), power (vertical jump), strength (isometric mid-thigh pull), speed (10m and 30m sprint), and endurance (Leger 20m multistage fitness test). These field tests were selected based on their validity and reliability (e.g., Brady et al, 2018) to test some of the key performance factors known to contribute towards success for our current 2020/21 nine partner National Sport organizations (Boxing Canada, Canoe Kayak Canada, Cycling Canada, Freestyle Canada, Rowing Canada, Rugby Canada, Speed Skating Canada, Ski Jumping Canada, Nordic Combined Ski Canada). Athlete testing results are compared against benchmarks, and further used by our partners to identify physical skills that may translate to strong potential in their respective sport. The top athletes may be invited to attend sport-specific testing events with stronger ecological validity (e.g., through “on-snow” or “on-the-water” experiences) hosted by our partners, and the top 100 athletes are then invited to compete at a national final. At the national final, we include a more advanced suite of exercises that offer further physical challenges that are more closely aligned to NSO national team sport-specific testing protocols.

Jenny Davey: Paralympian Search is for athletes aged 14 and up and is usually best suited for participants with a physical or visual impairment. Athletes with an intellectual impairment are also welcome to participate; however with only three Paralympic sports with eligible classification for athletes with intellectual impairments, at Paralympian Search events we typically support these athletes by connecting them to other sport partners who can help them get on the right pathway.

Initially Paralympian Search was very similar to Training Ground, with a number of generic field tests. However, these tests proved to be too linear, and national team coaches were actually finding the warm-up sessions more informative – they wanted to see more dynamic movements that better reflected where athletes might fit within the classifications of each sport. Therefore, we moved to more of a physical literacy approach with obstacle course-like challenges through which athletes can demonstrate their power, agility, coordination, speed and endurance in more of a “real world” environment, and we also invite the coaches to bring along equipment to set up sport demonstrations.

An important component of the Paralympian Search program is the involvement of Athlete Ambassadors. These national team athletes ensure Para athletes are at the centre of these events, because typically staff and volunteers running the event typically don’t have an impairment. The Ambassadors play a key role in connecting with participants informally during the day, and also deliver a presentation talking about their Paralympic experience, sharing diverse aspects of their story, and talking about the benefits of sport beyond the field of play, such as building strong friendships or developing important life skills. The involvement of the Ambassadors is always a highlight of our events and can really change the trajectory of an athlete’s involvement in the para sport system.

Kurt: RBC Training Ground also engages RBC Olympians at events as an important and powerful tool to inspire the next generation of Canadian athletes. I agree, the value of meeting an Olympian or Paralympian face to face when you’re a developing athlete cannot be overstated, whatever your goals or potential.

SIRC: Talent identification programs have been criticized in the past (e.g., see Issues in Athlete Identification and Selection: Are We Compromising Talent?). What makes RBC Training Ground and Paralympian Search different?

Kurt: Very good question; it is important to make note of the difference between physical giftedness and talent. Within RBC Training Ground we are working to identify physical giftedness, in other words who has the underlying physical capabilities to be successful in a sporting endeavor. National sport organizations, and their sport specific staff/coaches, work to convert this giftedness into sport specific talent through developing a love of the sport and the technical acumen and tactical awareness to express their physical giftedness in the sport. RBC Training Ground and Paralympian Search are not meant to be the single solution to athlete identification or development challenges in Canada, but they do provide options, through two compelling and engaging platforms, to connect athletes into the sport system and Olympic and Paralympic training opportunities.

For me, one strategy for enhancing efficacy of athlete identification is to keep athletes engaged in the development pathway as long as possible, which requires connected infrastructure and strong resources to support their development. It’s a long-term athlete development approach. Unfortunately, we know there are gaps or roadblocks in the Canadian sport system that can prematurely end an athletes’ progression along the pathway, or stop them from stepping on the pathway all together (e.g., early deselection, limited access, low availability, poor resources). Part of the work being done through RBC Training Ground is building the capacity of the system to address some of the gaps such as the provision of, and access to, a basic athlete field-testing and monitoring program. We are also working to strengthen the pathways between sports and across the local community, provincial/territorial, and national levels of the system; and integrating evidence-based approaches into our athlete identification and development processes. We’re seeing this now in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and in the Atlantic provinces in large part through our partners in the COPSI Network across the country, who have taken on program delivery locally.” For example, Sask Sport is using RBC Training Ground as a catalyst to help their provincial sport organizations better understand the key physical characteristics of their sports, develop their skills to interpret the data, and build systems to track athletes and monitor their progress to help them navigate the development pathways.

But that takes us back to putting athletes on a development pathway, and keeping them there. Through RBC Training Ground, we have an opportunity to engage young athletes that are just stepping onto the pathway. For these athletes, who are still too young to really know how good they might become, the program provides an honest assessment of where they’re at versus where they will most likely need to be to compete with the best athletes in the world.

For young athletes, this provides valuable insight on which to set goals and understand what they need to do to move along their development pathway on route to being the best they can be. Through the program, we also have an opportunity to engage older exceptional performers in a transfer situation. For example, some athletes’ development pathway may be ending with their university or national team career. This program connects them with opportunities to extend their pathway by encouraging them to think outside the box about what other sports may suit them. For example, a volleyball or basketball athlete may be well suited to extend their athletic career as a rower, or an artistic gymnastics athlete could become a successful freestyle aerials skier.

Jenny: Our approach to Paralympian Search is similar, but with some nuance based on the uniqueness of Para sport pathways. From a capacity building perspective, the CPC leverages the program to strengthen connections between community, provincial/territorial and national Para sport organizations, and support organizations like the Canadian Olympic and Paralympic Sport Institute (COPSI) Network. We know one of the biggest challenges for Para sport engagement is ensuring athletes and their families know what participation, training and competition opportunities exist in their region, and how to get involved.

At the individual level, Paralympian Search events are open to anyone regardless of their sport background. So we could have participants that have never been involved in Para sport, or an exceptional athlete that is seeking a transfer opportunity. All participants receive information on how to get started in the sports of their choice, and some may be selected for a local club, or provincial/territorial or national development program. The core goal is for every athlete to have a positive experience at the Paralympian Search.

I think one of the benefits of both programs is their delivery in communities across the country. This increases access to this type of high performance experience, and ensures the capacity building benefits of the programs are shared across provinces and territories.

Kurt: Absolutely. And one final thought, something that is often forgotten when we frame these programs solely from a talent identification lens, is that above all, these events are supposed to be fun! Both RBC Training Ground and Paralympian Search are committed to providing a safe, welcoming, athlete-centred approach to athlete success and holistic wellbeing. These events provide an opportunity for participants to step up and challenge themselves. What athletes learn about themselves from these types of events can be a springboard for the rest of their life – within sport, within their careers, and in their personal life.

SIRC: While the COVID-19 pandemic required Paralympian Search to be put on hold, ongoing support from RBC has enabled the RBC Training Ground program to continue during the pandemic. Tell me about the pivot to a virtual format for the program.

Kurt: When COVID-19 required the cancellation of the six remaining RBC Training Ground events in the spring of 2020, we made the decision to go virtual. This had obvious benefits from a program continuity perspective, and in making the program even more accessible – instead of coming to a bricks and mortar location, participants could complete the tests in their own home and community. During the spring and summer we refined our protocols to include a 20m sprint to test speed, along with a vertical jump to test power, and a shuttle run to test endurance. These protocols require only a tape measure, some distance markers, and a smartphone to record their efforts. The first submission window was open between October 14 and December 10, 2020. To be honest, we didn’t know what the response would be, but we’re really excited by the outcome. In total, we received 1,300 pre-registrations, of which over 300 have submitted their results so far. Submissions were received from coast to coast to coast (including, for the first time, athletes from the Northwest Territories), and include some exceptional athlete performances.

Since December 2020, our team has been reviewing and refining the process in preparation to host a second six to eight week window for applications between January and March, 2021. We’re hoping to host an in-personal national final type event(s) in May, but this of course will depend on public health restrictions.

The pivot of the program to a virtual format was important for our partners, for whom talent identification continues to be an important priority despite the challenges of the pandemic. They remain engaged and are excited about the results, but they are also experiencing some obvious challenges as we all learn to adapt to regional public health restrictions. In some situations, sport-specific testing will continue, but it will definitely look different from previous years. Rather than mass one-day sport specific sessions, sports are adapting to smaller gatherings as required. Developing effective strategies to engage athletes within each of the sport-specific development pathways, given ongoing travel and training restrictions, is a challenge we’re all working to overcome.

SIRC: One of the unique features of the Paralympian Search program is the integration of a robust research program. Jenny, tell me about some of the research happening.

Jenny: Paralympian Search supports several distinct but complementary research projects. In one, we use the Quality Parasport Participation Framework to measure athlete experiences before, during, and after events. Another examines the developmental pathways of athletes. This project tracks in-depth demographic data and sport experiences to identify patterns in athlete trajectories.

This year, with funding from Sport Canada’s Innovation Initiative, we launched a new project examining the integration of a gender-tailored approach into the Paralympian Search program that will better attract, engage, recruit, and retain female athletes into para sport opportunities. This includes the testing of new strategies such as unique messaging for female athletes, activities to develop relationships and cohesion during the event, and more on-site female coaches and ambassadors. We originally designed the project for face-to-face events, but of course have had to consider delivery in a virtual setting. Related to this project, we are also working with a group of national sport organizations and COPSI Network partners on some microgrant projects to explore different pathway experiences for female athletes. We expect outcomes from these projects will make the programs better for women, but will ultimately contribute to making the experience better for everyone.

As disappointed as we are for pressing pause on the program during the pandemic, it is providing an opportunity to review and assess the program, to learn from others – including our colleagues at RBC Training ground, and to think about things differently. When the program resumes, the experiences of athletes and our partners will be better in a number of critical areas.

SIRC: It’s really interesting how both programs are continually evolving based on the latest research and evaluation. Thinking back to the tests that are integrated into RBC Training Ground, I noticed that there isn’t a psychological component to the testing. Is this something we can expect in the future?

Kurt: We recognize that there is definitely a psychological component to success at the highest levels of sport, but for now we haven’t found a valid nor reliable predictive test or measurement tool that is appropriate for our context. We know that mental skills evolve and change and, most importantly, can be learned. There are new tools emerging within Canada at the National level, such as Gold Medal Profiles for psychology, that provide assessment resources for NSOs to share where appropriate with their provincial/territorial sport organizations and clubs. Personally, I’m really excited about the future potential of research in and around the psychological aspects involved within the talent identification and development process. It’s interesting how athletes respond to their Training Ground experience. Some young athletes may look at their results compared to the elite standards and wonder “what’s the point?” Others will take their report card or virtual test results and use it as a baseline, and as motivation to measure their progress for future success. We are seeing many individuals return to the program two, three and four years in a row as they continue to develop as athletes. Some of these returning athletes are the ones who are eventually nominated for support by our NSO partners – development just takes time. However, we know a variety of factors influence these types of behaviours, and that cognitive biases can limit talent identification practices.

SIRC: What kind of results have you seen through the programs? Can we expect to see some Paralympian Search and RBC Training Ground participants at the upcoming Tokyo Games?

Track cyclist Kelsey Mitchell

Jenny: Since 2016 when the program was launched, the CPC has hosted 14 events across eight cities in five provinces, engaging hundreds of athletes with opportunities at the community, provincial/territorial and national levels. A number of athletes have also qualified for Petro-Canada FACE grants which support developing athletes before they qualify for funding through Sport Canada’s carding program. One Paralympian Search participant qualified Canada a Tokyo quota spot. Other notable success stories include Next Gen snowboarder Sarah Anne Cormier, Para nordic skier Kyle Barber, Para canoeist Mike Trauner, and Para athletics athlete Charlotte Bolton.

Kurt: Since RBC Training Ground was officially launched in 2016, we have tested over 8,000 athletes at over 50 events across the country. Overall, 10% of participants have met sport-specific benchmarks, , and 117 were funded through the RBC Training Ground program. At this time, we predict eight to ten RBC Training Ground athletes to be heading to Tokyo. This includes world record-setting track cyclist Kelsey Mitchell, who was a university soccer player when she was identified via RBC Training Ground in 2017; and possibly rower Avalon Wasteneys, a cross-country skier turned rower. Beyond Tokyo, we are also looking towards Beijing 2022 on the winter side where we have athletes such as Marion Thenault who was identified in 2017, a former artistic gymnast now competing as a world-class aerials freestyle skier.

Jenny: While both programs have had some exceptional results, the Tokyo Games will also provide an opportunity to celebrate Canadian athletes and share their stories to inspire more Canadians to participate in sport, whether it’s trying a new community program or dreaming about the podium. Then, through Paralympian Search and RBC Training Ground, we hope to more effectively connect with Paralympic and Olympic hopefuls to put them on a development path and support their long-term success.

About Jenny Davey and Kurt Innes

Jenny Davey is the Manager of Paralympic Pathways at the Canadian Paralympic Committee. She has a Masters in Psychology and Pedagogy of Sport specializing in Para sport coaching, and her experiences include time spent time as a teacher, researcher, sport administrator, and Para sailing coach.

Kurt Innes, OLY, ChPC, is the Director, Performance Solutions, with the Canadian Sport Institute Pacific (CSI Pacific). He is an Olympic Athlete (1992), Olympic Coach (2000, 2004), and a graduate of the Sport Administration program of Mount Royal University and the National Coaching Institute-Calgary.

About Paralympian Search

Paralympian Search is a one-day athlete identification and informational event designed to challenge participants in different agility and skill testing tasks so that they can learn about different Para sports, get connected to sport opportunities and maybe one day even represent Canada at the Paralympic Games.

The event also welcomes current or former athletes from all levels aiming to transfer into a new Paralympic sport or discover a new sport that can complement their main discipline.

About RBC Training Ground

RBC Training Ground is a talent identification and athlete-funding program designed to find young athletes with Olympic potential, and provide them with the resources they need to achieve their podium dreams.

With the belief that high performance sports should be accessible to all athletes that are talented, qualified and have the will to compete, this program travels the country searching for athletes between the ages of 14 and 25 that will fuel the Canadian Olympic pipeline.