The role of deliberate practice and play in career progression in sport: the early engagement hypothesis

Abstract

Experts acquire domain‐specific skills as a result of the activities in which they participate throughout their development. We examine the domain‐specific activities in which two groups of elite youth soccer players participated between six and 12 years of age. Our goal was to examine early participation differences between those who progressed to professional status at 16 years of age and those who did not. Data were contrasted to a control group of recreational‐level players and examined in the context of the Developmental Model of Sport Participation, which supports the importance of late specialization and early diversity between six and 12 years of age. The elite players who went on to attain professional status accumulated more hours per year in soccer play activities, but not in soccer practice, competition or other sports, between six and 12 years of age, compared with those who did not progress. The two elite groups averaged more hours per year in soccer practice compared with recreational‐level players, but not soccer play, competition or other sports. We propose the “early engagement hypothesis” to explain our results. Accordingly, practice and play in the primary sport between six and 12 years of age contributes to the development of expert performance in English soccer.

Keywords:

• expert performance
• skill acquisition

Notes

1. We were also interested in how participants having a high (or low) number of hours in one type of soccer‐specific activity affected the number of hours they had in another activity. Therefore, we conducted a correlation analysis on the average hours per year in each soccer activity. Pearson's correlation coefficients were calculated to examine the relationship between each activity. Significant medium‐sized positive correlations were found between soccer practice and each of the other two soccer activities (competition, play). Participants who had a high average number of hours in soccer practice also had high average hours per year in each of the other two activities. No correlation was found between soccer play and competition. There was no significant correlation between average hours per year in soccer activity and those in other sports.