Attitude of young basketball players and their coaches towards the importance of abilities that are necessary for a coach

Abstract

Basketball has become especially popular, it is based on new technologies for the development of the science of sport more and more often and the success of athletes and coaches in basketball depends on lots of factors more and more often. One of the main factors is the interaction between the coach and athletes. Thus, coaches and athletes must understand each other in order to seek sport achievements. Taking into account these facts, the attitude of young basketball players and their coaches to the importance of abilities that are necessary for a real and ideal coach is analysed in the article. The questionnaire by T. Moser ,,Real and ideal coach“ that consists of 17 statements reflecting different abilities, which are important for the coach and his/her activity, was used in the research. 171 15–16 basketball players and 41 basketball coaches participated in the research and all the research participants were selected from the list of Lithuanian basketball sport schools randomly. The mean age of the basketball players was 15±1.28 and that of the coaches – 48±11.4. The results revealed the following abilities of coaches: proper communication, keeping friendly contacts with athletes, revelation of advantages and disadvantages of pupils were more important to the young basketball players statistically reliably than to the coaches in their self-assessment. However, the coaches indicate in the self-assessment it is more important to them to prepare a good training and have good knowledge of their sport statistically reliably than to the basketball players assessing their coaches. The basketball players have a slightly different image of their ideal coach: he/she should be an example to the athletes, create a good atmosphere and feeling in the team, discover and train talents and keep friendly contacts with the athletes. [...]