Junior athletes’ representations of professionally important qualities of a coach

Abstract

The study of such social and psychological factor of athletic performance as interpersonal relationships is presented. The theoretical analysis of the influence of junior athletes’ representations of professionally important qualities of a coach on top-class sports performance is carried out. The results of empirical study of relationships between athletic performance and representations of professionally important personality traits of a real and ideal coach in junior fencers are given. It is proved that the greatest differences between evaluations of professionally important qualities of their real coach and representations of an ideal coach are typical to junior athletes with average athletic performance. The features of these representations in athletes with different motivation and self-estimation are shown.