Special thank you to Kacey Neely for providing the research paper and the introduction below.
Deselection — or being cut — from a sports team can be a crushing experience for a young athlete. While deselection is a delicate process and coaches should handle making cuts with care, athletes and parents are required to deal with the consequences of being deselected. The purpose of this research was to examine how athletes and parents cope with deselection from provincial teams using a communal coping perspective. Findings show how parents can support their children after being cut, and demonstrate how appropriate communication plans and coping strategies can help ease the pain. and encourage continued sport participation and positive athlete development and for years to come.
