Supporting student-athletes with their social challenges: Dual career support providers’ perspectives

Balancing education, elite sport and a satisfying social life can be challenging to student-athletes (Gledhill & Harwood, 2015). The time pressure associated with engaging in a dual career (DC) can jeopardise the quality of athletes’ relationships with f riends and family and in some cases lead to severe loneliness (e.g. Debois et al., 2015; Geraniosova & Ronkainen, 2015). To support student-athletes proactively in coping with these and other challenges, the role of DC support providers has become increasingly important (Wylleman, De Brandt, & Defruyt, 2017). As part of the Erasmus+ Sport "Gold in Education and Elite Sport" project, the objective of this study was to gain insight in how DC support providers try to support student-athletes to attain a satisfactory social life. Using a convergent parallel research design (Creswell & Clark, 2011), data was gathered from N = 265 DC support providers from nine European Member States participating in an online survey, as well as from N = 28 DC support providers from four European Member States via four focus groups. Results of the quantitative part of this study showed that DC support providers perceive that student-athletes need (to develop) planning, time management and social competencies to cope with this scenario. From the focus group analyses, several support strategies to enhance these competencies proactively, as well as to optimise student-athletes’ social environment, were distilled and will be presented. The current findings provide insight in how DC support providers (try to) enhance student-athletes’ coping with social challenges.