| Description |
Sports camps on college and university campuses provide benefits for both the sponsoring athletic program and the youth who participate. Intended programmatic outcomes include the development of athletic skills as well as the development of prosocial values and life skills. Research suggests, however, that sports camps on campus are not basing their programs on current positive youth development research. This is unfortunate because designing and implementing programs based on research findings can more effectively and efficiently promote desired outcomes. Barriers exist, however, to practitioners utilizing research. A promising strategy for overcoming these barriers involves the identification of practitioner-generated best practices that can be shared across programs in different locales with varying program structures. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate practitioner-generated best practices that campus-based sports camps are currently using to intentionally design programs that promote outcomes related to prosocial values and life skills. Two guiding research questions provided the structure for this study: 1) How are sports camps on campus designed to achieve prosocial value and life skill outcomes such as teamwork, sportsmanship, and leadership? and 2) How can examples of practitioner-generated best practices, operationalized as indicators of high-quality camp programming, be communicated to sports camps on campus in order to be utilized in improving the quality services that are offered? Qualitative analysis was conducted on the transcripts of 10 semistructured telephone interviews conducted with camp directors, frontline staff, and support staff drawn from seven different sports camp programs held on college and university campuses. One college and one university were located in the Eastern U.S., and one university was located in the Western U.S. Results indicated that prosocial value and life skill outcomes are fostered through the creation of a connection between campers and camp staff. This connection is promoted through processes of staff training and preparedness, and through processes of programming for skill development. Practitionergenerated best practices for creating this connection included staff serving as role models, staff understanding that "it's more than just baseball," staff functioning as the "tip of the sword," staff intentionally building conversations, and staff developing a coach-player bond with campers. |
