Author
Listed:
- Samantha Marshall
- Nicola McNeil
- Emma Louise Seal
- Matthew Nicholson
Abstract
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, elite sport leagues implemented hubs, or ‘bubbles’, which restricted athletes’ movements and social interactions in order to minimise the risk of athlete infection and allow competitions to continue. This was a new way of working and living for elite athletes and there was a dearth of literature on this topic. The main objective of the study was to investigate the impacts of the hub model on athletes over time, and what job demands and resources existed for athletes through the application of Demerouti et al. (2001) Job Demands-Resources Model. Multiple sequential semi-structured interviews were conducted with Women’s National Basketball League (WNBL) athletes during the 2020 season, which was held entirely in a hub in North Queensland, Australia. The key job demands in an elite sport hub identified were the volume of work, simultaneous overload and underload, and nature of work in the hub. The key resources that emerged include recovery services, control and player agency, and constructive social relations. Despite the presence of job resources, which work to counteract, or buffer job demands in order to reduce work stress and improve motivation, they were found to be insufficient for athletes and inequitably distributed between clubs. The intensity of the hub model also amplified demands present in all WNBL seasons. This research is therefore useful for planning of future elite sport leagues to improve the type and amount of resources available to athletes, thereby improving athlete wellbeing and performance both within and outside a hub model.
Suggested Citation
Samantha Marshall & Nicola McNeil & Emma Louise Seal & Matthew Nicholson, 2022.
"Elite sport hubs during COVID-19: The job demands and resources that exist for athletes,"
PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 17(7), pages 1-16, July.
Handle:
RePEc:plo:pone00:0269817
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0269817
Download full text from publisher
Corrections
All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0269817. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.
If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.
We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .
If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.
For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .
Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through
the various RePEc services.