Title: Within Sport Diversity and Developmental Profiles of Competitive Swimmers
Supervisor: Dr. Nicola Hodges
Committee members: Dr. Bradley Young, Dr. Desmond McEwan, Baylee Munro
Abstract:
There has been much interest in pathways of skill development in sport related to early specialization and sport-sampling. Most of this research has been centered around team sports (where skill group differences, rather than performance times can be compared) or late involvement sports (where diversity is expected). Moreover, diversity has primarily focused on involvement in different sports, rather than different events within the same sport. One study that stands out as a counter-example, was on German swimmers from an online database of swim-times and events (Staub et al., 2020). Reliable relationships were shown between within-sport diversity (stroke and distances) and adult success at age 18 (higher FINA points). However, the data was from a relatively old cohort, when specialization may have been the norm, and with no distinctions between male and female athletes; despite evidence that males specialize later compared to females (Dormehl & Williams, 2016). I am proposing to replicate and extend this work, evaluating the role of within sport diversity for later success in Canadian swimmers (using www.swimrankings.net). I will compare across sex, different age cohorts, and evaluate success at junior (16 yr) and adult years (18 and 21 yr). In a second part of the thesis, I will administer a questionnaire to junior and senior national and varsity level swimmers, to collect information on specific swim practice activities and other sport involvement. As within-sport diversity has not been measured in a training context, I hope to learn more about the amount and type of diversity in swim activities during training. Preliminary analysis has been conducted on competition diversity, delimited to overall number of events and FINA points at age 16, 18, and 21 years for the top 100 males and females in 50m freestyle (N = 200). Relationships were seen between diversity in early adolescence (11-13 yrs) and later success in the 50m free, especially for the female athletes. Based on study 1 and study 2, I expect to see greater within-sport diversity for higher-performing athletes (athletes who have higher FINA points). Additionally, I predict there will be differences in patterns of within-sport diversity between junior and senior level athletes, based off previous studies that indicate different developmental profiles of junior and senior athletes. Overall, this work will contribute to our understanding of optimal developmental pathways for attaining expertise in sport and will build evidence towards a nuanced measure of sport diversity. This work is also expected to have practical implications for recommendations concerning childhood/adolescence sport diversity, both for swimming and other sports.