Author : Kavya Kapoor
Pathways School Gurgaon
Abstract
The decrease in sport participation and drop-outs from tournaments even by international athletes over the past century has highlighted the crucial need to understand the concept of Sports anxiety. Anxiety is a body’s response to stress due to circumstances which are associated with worry and fear. Social factors and stereotypes are key driving forces for sports anxiety and act as a demotivator for all athletes intended to pursue any sort of sport (Gender stereotypes and Motor Performance 2022). This study aims to explore sports anxiety among adolescents. The data was collected for 32 respondents through 'The Sport Anxiety Scale-2' by Smith et al., 2006. Further, interviews were conducted with 5 female adolescent athletes to understand the perspectives and opinions of female athletes regarding the stereotypes and how these affect them. Once relevant data was collected, hypothesis testing was carried out using the Mann-Whitney U test to come to a final conclusion. All in all, sports anxiety is a social issue on the rise due to societal pressures and socio-economic difficulties for certain individuals. While their concentration might be unaffected, other factors like somatic and worry are rising. Understanding these aspects is especially important in the real-world context, as this problem can escalate into larger economic and social difficulties for even countries.
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