Where School Social Work Meets School-Based Sport: Preparing Coaches As Colleagues to Support Holistic Student-Athlete Development

Background and Purpose: Schools experiencing behavioral health workforce shortages have opportunities to involve other stakeholders, like school-based sport coaches, in efforts to address the student mental health (MH) crisis. Nationally, 51% of coaches spend over 15 hours each week with student-athletes (Anderson-Butcher & Bates, 2022), and with nearly 8 million adolescents participating in high school sport, coaches are well-positioned to teach youth coping, life, and leadership skills. This study investigated whether school social workers could leverage coaches and train them to support school-wide efforts to promote mental well-being and teach life skills through sport. Specifically, this study examined if there was a relationship between participation in coach training on important topics and coach self-efficacy to “go beyond the X’s and O’s” and support students’ overall health and development.

Methods: Data were collected in a 2021 state-wide coaching survey (N = 5,656). Measures included indicators of participation in different coach trainings and the Coach Beyond Readiness Index (CBRI; Bates et al., 2023), a valid and reliable scale measuring coaches’ perceptions of their abilities to support student-athlete holistic health and development. Independent variables were prior participation (Yes/No) in coach trainings including (a) life skill development (LSD); (b) MH; and (c) sport skills and techniques (SST). Dependent variables included coaches' self-efficacy on CBRI subscales: (a) Promoting LSD through sport; (b) Promoting social-emotional health; (c) Teaching sport tactics and techniques; and (d) Training and conditioning. Subscales included multiple items with Likert-style responses to assess coach self-efficacy. Analyses included independent-sample t-tests to compare mean CBRI scores between coaches who received training in related topics to those who did not. Significance was set at p < .05.

Results: Coaches who received training in LSD (M = 4.70, SD = .41) compared to those who did not (M = 4.60, SD = .46) reported significantly higher self-efficacy in promoting LSD through sport (p < .001, d = .43). The coaches who received MH training (M = 4.16, SD = .55) compared to coaches who did not (M = 3.80, SD = .59) reported significantly higher self-efficacy in promoting social-emotional health (p < .001, d = .57). Participants who received training in SST (M = 4.53, SD = .44) compared to the participants who did not (M = 4.28, SD = .50) reported significantly higher self-efficacy in teaching sport tactics and techniques (p < .001, d = .45). Coaches who received training in SST (M = 4.24, SD = .66) compared to coaches who have not (M = 3.93, SD = .75) reported significantly higher self-efficacy in training and conditioning (p < .001, d = .68) as well.

Conclusions and Implications: This study revealed that receiving training in tactics and techniques, LSD through sport, training and conditioning, and social-emotional health were significantly related to increased levels of confidence and preparation to go “beyond the X’s and O’s.” Considering school-based behavioral health workforce shortages, school social workers can use these findings to train and empower school-based coaches to help address the adolescent MH crisis through sport.