Leaving sport: Easing career transitions

Abstract

First paragraph: Helping competitive athletes cope with career transitions is one of the most commonly encountered issues for sport psychology practitioners (Murphy, 1995). Although one of the only inevitabilities in high-performance sport is that eventually every competitor will have to terminate their sporting career at the elite level, some individuals experience adjustment difficulties when faced with retirement. For this reason, practitioners have suggested that, in some cases, psychological interventions may be useful for athletes pre-transition and posttransition (Baillie, 1993; Danish, Petitpas, & Hale, 1993; Petitpas, Brewer, & Van Raalte, 1996). The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of intervention strategies for practitioners working (or interested in working) with athletes in transition. First, we present background on the theoretical frameworks sport psychologists have employed when consulting with this population. We then illustrate counseling an athlete in pre-transition, in this case, an adolescent male who is contemplating leaving his sport. The following case example involves post-transition group work with three athletes who precipitously exited their sports. The chapter concludes with an overview of additional resources and interventions to consider in the psychological care of athletes in transition