Understanding Para Athlete Development: An Examination of Para Swimming
Abstract
Most competitively spirited individuals who engage in sport, we call them athletes, are striving to be the best they can be at their chosen discipline. To help athletes achieve their goals, several athlete development models (Côté, 1999, Gulbin et al., 2013, Higgs et al., 2019) have been produced to help coaches and sport administrators best support, and guide an athlete to achieve their optimum performance. While it has been recognized that there is contextual uniqueness to the para athlete development experience (Huetzler et al., 2016) and that there are nuances to the para athlete development experience that need to be considered in the development of a para athlete development model (Lemez et al., 2020) no such model currently exists. Some research has been done to address para athlete development from the perspective of other stakeholders such as coaches and administrators (Patatas et al., 2020) or involved athletes through quantitative methods (Lemez et al., 2020, Dehghansai et al., 2017, Dehghansai & Baker, 2020), but there is a paucity when it comes to representations of the voice of para athletes. Therefore, my dissertation research examined the athlete development experiences of para athletes through qualitative methodologies. I conducted two studies. The first study examined the development experiences of para swimmers at various stages of development from the perspective of para swimmers and parents of para swimmers. Utilizing an interpretative phenomenological analysis, barriers and challenges of para swimmer development were identified. The second study involved para swimmers in the latter stages of development and focused on identifying the contextual factors that impacted para swimmer development. From the data of the second study, I was also able to compare the development experiences of para swimmers to the key factors of the Long-Term Development model (Higgs et al., 2019) and identify systematic gaps in the para swimmer development pathway. Adding the perspective of para athletes to the conversation on athlete development will assist sport administrators in addressing the current gaps in the para sport system and help to inform the production of a para athlete development model.