Joseph Baker */**, Stephen Cobley **, William J. Montelpare ***, Nick Wattie **, Brent E. Faught **** and The Ontario Hockey Research Group *****
(*) Lifespan Health and Performance Laboratory, School of Kinesiology and Health Science, York University, Canada
(**) Carnegie Research Institute, Leeds Metropolitan University, Leeds, UK
(***) School of Kinesiology, Lakehead University, Thunder Bay, Canada
(****) Department of Community Health Sciences, Brock University, St. Catharines, Canada
(*****) The Ontario Hockey Research Group
Citation
Baker, J., Cobley, S., J. Montelpare, W., Wattie, N., E. Faught, B., Ontario Hockey Research Group, T. (2010). Exploring proposed mechanisms of the relative age effect in Canadian minor hockey. International Journal of Sport Psychology, 41(2), 148-159.
Abstract
One consistently reported influence on athlete development is relative age (i.e., one’s age compared to others in a cohort). Relative age effects are grounded in the notion that sport selection systems choose athletes based on maturational characteristics and that once chosen, these athletes are placed in superior developmental environments. The purpose of this study was to confirm a relative age effect in a sample of 211 representative male ice-hockey players and determine whether participants in the different age quartiles were distinguishable by two factors thought to be responsible for perpetuating relative age effects in sport: their level of physical maturation (reflected by height and weight values) and/or in-game exposure (as reflected by actual playing time measured at a representative sample of games). Results indicated that a significantly greater proportion of players were selected from early in the year but, there was little variability among participants for the other dependent variables. These results suggest that elite youth sport coaches may select athletes who do not differ in body type and that once selected for the elite representative team athletes have comparable experiences.
Keywords: Development, Talent identification, Youth sport