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The athlete’s journey: transitions through sport
The athlete’s journey: transitions through sport

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1 What are transitions?

Before you begin to investigate the more in-depth psychological implications related to transitions, let’s first look at the range of transitions an athlete may experience during their journey through sport. This first activity introduces you to the course authors, Candice Lingam-Willgoss and Caroline Heaney, as they discuss their own personal experiences of transitions in sport.

Activity _unit2.2.1 Activity 1 Real people and real lives

Timing: Allow about 30 minutes

Both Candice and Caroline were highly committed to their chosen sports, in fact, one of the reasons they wanted to write this course was due to their own personal experiences of transitions in sport. Watch the video below and make notes on the following points:

  • What were the differences and similarities in Candice’s and Caroline’s pathways into their chosen sports?
  • What transitions have they both experienced?
  • Note down the psychological impact of the transitions they experienced.
  • Why did they retire from sport?
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 1
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Transcript: Video 1

BEN OAKLEY:
So, Caroline and Candice, welcome. So we're going to go straight in. We haven't got much time. Caroline, tell us about how you got into your sport.
CAROLINE HEANEY:
So my sport is athletics. I did lots of different sports at school, but I always really enjoyed athletics the most. But I didn't join an athletics club until I was 16, which is probably quite late compared to some of my peers. And that was mainly just because I didn't have the confidence to join a club without my friends until I got to that age.
BEN OAKLEY:
Oh, dear. And athletics, that's a very broad spectrum. What event did you do?
CAROLINE HEANEY:
I did 400-metre hurdles. I competed at a decent club level as a senior athlete. And then as a masters athlete, I was a British champion.
BEN OAKLEY:
Fantastic. So you're going to talk more about transitions. Tell us about your journey through your sport. I think you were in it for 20-odd years, weren't you?
CAROLINE HEANEY:
Yeah, I've stuck around for quite a while. So I retired when I was 39, after starting at age 16. So I had a very long career. And because of that, I had quite a lot of transitions that happened during my career.
So I had things like moving to a new club. So after about 15 years in my first club, I moved to a club where I could get a higher level of competitions. So they were in a national league rather than local leagues. So that was different. So it was a smaller club moving to a bigger club, different people. So that was quite difficult at first but also gave me lots of opportunities.
BEN OAKLEY:
That would be a change of culture. What about a change of coach? Did you experience that?
CAROLINE HEANEY:
Yes, at a similar time, I did change coaches. So I was with my first coach for about 15 years. I then went into a period where I coached myself for a couple of years and some other athletes in my training group. And then I moved on to a different coach after that.
So there was a couple of transitions from moving from being coached, to being a coach and coaching yourself, and then moving on to a different coach who does things differently to how previous coaches have. So that's always a little bit difficult. But you kind of learn different things from different people.
BEN OAKLEY:
OK. Lots of adjustments and change there. What about the experience of getting older and maybe changing categories and maybe your times not being so good as before?
CAROLINE HEANEY:
Yeah, I think moving from being a senior to being a masters athlete, which happens at age 35 in athletics, was quite difficult for me in some ways, because my time started to deteriorate. So I found it quite hard being slower. And that probably contributed to my decision to retire in the end, just basically not being able to cope with that.
But at the same time, masters competition did give me other opportunities. So I was a decent level senior athlete competing at the club level, county level. But when I became a masters athlete, I became British champion, so that was quite nice and kind of softened the blow a little bit.
BEN OAKLEY:
And just very shortly, which of those transitions was the toughest for you personally?
CAROLINE HEANEY:
Out of those transitions, I think, probably the moving to senior to masters. So-- because athletics is very-- it's very clear that you're not as good as you used to be. Your times are a few seconds slower than they were. So there's no hiding.
BEN OAKLEY:
[INAUDIBLE].
CAROLINE HEANEY:
No, it doesn't.
BEN OAKLEY:
So, Candice, what about your journey? I think it's a bit different.
CANDICE LINGAM-WILLGOSS:
Yeah, mine is quite different to Caroline's. So I'm actually a skier, or was a skier, which, obviously, is not a sport you start to do in school. So I did all the traditional school sports and then was spotted skiing on a family holiday and invited to join a club, which I did. So I kind of entered that high-performance sport world at about 12. So it was quite, quite, different to Caroline.
BEN OAKLEY:
That's amazing, to be spotted on a holiday and then be invited to join a club and possibly a high-performance programme. So within that programme, how long did it last for?
CANDICE LINGAM-WILLGOSS:
I only competed from 12 till 17. That was my years of competing. So quite different and much shorter career compared to Caroline.
BEN OAKLEY:
And what happened in the middle and end-- latter stage of that, when you were 16 and 17? What was happening then?
CANDICE LINGAM-WILLGOSS:
So the end of my career, really, was-- it was really injury that meant that I decided it wasn't something I could continue doing. And I had to make a decision whether I was going to carry on, maybe have surgery, maybe make a career of it, or whether I was going to go back and focus on going to university and things.
And I was quite realistic with myself. British skiers, how many make it? Not that many. And it's a lot of work and effort, a lot of travel. And all of these factors played a part in me thinking, I don't know that I can keep doing this. And I kind of wasn't enjoying it as I probably should. There was lots of factors towards the end of my career.
BEN OAKLEY:
And what about the kind of question, really, about travel around Europe? Because you've been in the Alps a lot. One day you'd be in France, the next day you'd be in Switzerland, then you'd be in Austria. Was that quite-- those sort of smaller micro transitions, is that hard to deal with as well?
CANDICE LINGAM-WILLGOSS:
Yeah, that was quite difficult, particularly as I was quite young when I entered that programme. So at 12 years old, I was traveling to lots of different countries on my own, with a squad, obviously, but not with my parents. And that was quite young to not spend time with them for pretty much every holiday. I'd be away for two, three, four weeks, sometimes, in a very strict regime of having to be up early, train, having everything I ate, everything I did, monitored, long days of training.
So it was almost a bit like school again. Everything was so structured in my life at a very young age. But also, then, what I was putting my body through at such a young age. So it was a lot of things to deal with. So I think, for me, it wasn't so much connected necessarily just to the sport. It was that transition into a different way of life, really, at a very young age.
BEN OAKLEY:
And on top of all that, you've got all your educational commitments. Presumably you took some exams and things. But we won't go into that now. And the rest of the course is going to explore all these points. Thanks so much.
End transcript: Video 1
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Video _unit2.2.1 Video 1
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Discussion

As you listen to Candice and Caroline talk, you will have noticed how both still maintain involvement in sport and still identify closely with being an athlete. Both have experiences in very different sports and performance settings and retired at different ages.

Unlike many sports that you are introduced to at school, Candice’s first experience of her sport was through her family. She experienced a range of different transitions quite early on, from joining a ski team at 12 years old and finding herself in a high-performance setting at a very early age. She also reflects how, in the six years she competed, she had to grow up very quickly and spend a large proportion of her time away from home from a young age. While no one injury caused her to retire, she was skiing in pain a lot of the time and was quite realistic about the opportunity to ‘make it’ as a skier.

Candice’s story is in contrast to the relatively late transition into sport experienced by Caroline who didn’t join an athletics club until she was 16, something she reflects may have resulted in her having such a long career. Another difference is how Caroline refers to having a ‘phased retirement’, first retiring from hurdling and then from 400m/800m flat running. It is very clear she still misses competing on the track.

In the last activity you learned about the different transitions Candice and Caroline have made in their sporting journeys. Other transitions that athletes may experience throughout their sporting life, and which you will explore in the rest of this course, are shown in Figure 1.

Poster displaying the different transitions athletes face: injury/illness; pregnancy/parenthood; relocation; deselection; financial pressures; change of coach; change of weight classification.
Figure _unit2.2.1 Figure 1 What transitions do athletes face?
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Poster displaying the different transitions athletes face: injury/illness; pregnancy/parenthood; relocation; deselection; financial pressures; change of coach; change of weight classification.

Figure 1 What transitions do athletes face?

You will explore both normative and non-normative transitions in more detail in Sessions 4 and 5.

You have now heard about the authors’ experiences of transitions in sport. Next, you will reflect on your own transitions or those of someone you coach or are closely associated with.