The Effects of Coach Pregame Speeches on Young Players’ Self-efficacy

Abstract

In contrast with the extensive use of coaches’ pre-game speeches, there is a lack of research on the effects of such commonly used strategy. Different authors have prompted that the pre-game speech contributes to enhanced athletes’ self-efficacy. However, previous results are inconclusive. This study examines its effects on young athletes’ self-efficacy in two different quantitative studies. Study 1 compared athletes’ self-efficacy beliefs when arriving to the premises and immediately after receiving the coach’s speech in a sample of 61 soccer players (male=42, female=19; age range: 10–16) from 6 different teams. Repeated measures ANOVA showed significant results, F(1, 60) = 27.32, p < .001, η² = .313. However, such differences did not appear when age was added as covariate, F(1, 58) = 0.08, p = .777, η² = .001. In order to control for the effect of the match itself, Study 2 analyzed the influence of pre-game speeches on eight matches following the same procedure in a sample of ten male players (M = 16.77 years old, SD = 0.60, range: 16–17 years old) from the same team. Results showed the differences were attributable to the match, F(7, 98.54) = 7.625, p < .001, rather than to the pre-game speech. According to our results, differences found are due to age and the specific match the players have to face and seems pre-game speeches do not have any influence on athletes’ perceived efficacy. Whether such speeches have an effect on other facets should be stablished in future work.