Sports participation offers many benefits to adolescents and is influenced by grit, which is defined as the passion and perseverance required to achieve long-term goals, and athletic identity (AI), which is defined as the degree of personal connection to sport. More specifically, evidence suggests that both AI and grit independently facilitate benefits, such as teamwork and long-term success, but little is known about how the interaction between AI and grit may impact adolescent athletes. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the relationship between AI and grit and examine how AI and grit varied by gender, sport participation, specialization, and injury status amongst adolescent athletes. Through a cross-sectional survey study, we examined the correlation between grit and AI, and compared grit and AI between gender, sport participation, specialization, and injury status. There was no significant relationship between AI and grit (rho = −0.09, p = 0.36). There were no significant differences between genders in AI and grit (U = 1214, p = 0.49; U = 1354.5, p = 0.82). Team sport and more specialized athletes had stronger AI than individual sport and less specialized athletes (U = 971, p = 0.02; H = 4.43, p = 0.04). Injured athletes and athletes who practiced 1–6 h per week had higher grit than those who were uninjured and practiced more (U = 637.5, p < 0.001; H = 11.28, p = 0.046). Collectively, these data can inform targeted interventions to cultivate and promote the benefits of AI and grit in adolescent athletes.
Gilmer et al. (Wed,) studied this question.
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