Sampling between sports and athlete development: a scoping review

ABSTRACT

Across a range of youth sport contexts, early specialization (i.e., intensive engagement in a single sport from an early age) has been associated with a variety of negative outcomes such as burnout, injury, and premature sport attrition. Accordingly, researchers and health practitioners have suggested that young athletes participate in a range of sports (i.e., sampling between sports) at differing levels of intensity to avoid these negative consequences. Whereas a growing body of research continues to explore the effects that early specialization can have on developing athletes, questions remain regarding the impact of sampling between sports from an empirical standpoint. Therefore, the purpose of this scoping review was to systematically search the youth sport literature for articles linking the practice of sampling between sports to outcomes related to sport performance, sport participation, or personal development (i.e., the 3Ps). In total, 9257 articles were captured through a scoping search procedure and 53 were retained for further analysis. Broadly, sampling between sports appeared to support improved sport performance and continued sport participation. It was also observed that relevant research completed on the sampling topic exhibited an overrepresentation of (a) quantitative approaches; (b) retrospective methodologies; (c) male participants, men, and boys; and (d) findings related predominantly to sport performance. It is recommended that researchers continue to explore the effects that sampling multiple sports in childhood and adolescence can have on athlete development through the use of varied methods as well as increased engagement with diverse athlete populations.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth sport
• athlete development
• diversification
• multi-sport
• early specialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada [SSHRC grant number: # 435-2020-0093].