Enacting Community Sports Coaching Work: Implications for Health and Wellbeing

Abstract

The role of a community sports coach is changing due to the government’s current sports and non-sport policy priorities, and it has become increasingly clear that coaches have become key policy actors in sport and associated policy areas. Despite the importance placed on coaches within the current sports policy agenda in the UK, this population group has been significantly under-researched. We know relatively little about the working lives of community sports coaching practitioners, as well as what impact this work has on their health and wellbeing. The aim of this sociological research was to adopt an interpretative approach to explore the sports work associated with community sports coaching and how this work impacts the health and wellbeing of coaches. 40 coaches from 14 organisations across the public (4), private (2) and third (8) sectors within community sports coaching were interviewed, with each interview lasting between approximately 60- and 75-minutes totalling 2,720 minutes of
generated interview data. The resulting interview transcripts were subjected to an iterative analysis process (Tracy, 2024). Several interrelated themes were identified and principally understood in relation to the work of Thoits (2011), Verhaeghe (2014), and Kalleberg (2009, 2018). The key findings identified 1) how macro-social and micropolitical forces influence the conditions of community sports coaching work, 2) how such forces play out in relations both inside and outside the workplace, 3) the challenges faced with maintaining a successful work-life balance, 4) the appropriateness of coach education provision, 5) how the different, but interrelated, conditions of this work impact coaches’ health and wellbeing. These findings provide original and significant multi-level insights into the everyday realties and demands of community sports coaching and how performing this work can impact the health (physical and mental), and wellbeing (emotional, social, and economic) of coaches

Date of Award	16 Sept 2025
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Edge Hill University
Supervisor	ANDY SMITH (Director of Studies), LEE NELSON (Supervisor) & MARK PARTINGTON (Supervisor)