Effects of COVID-19 on the Emotional Experience of Schoolchildren in Traditional Sports Games

The objective of this study was to analyse how modifications to traditional sports games (TSG) adapted to the COVID-19 standard affected primary school pupils’ emotional experiences, particularly by gender. A total of 93 primary school students participated. The Games and Emotion Scale for Children was used to assess the type and intensity of emotion. After implementing COVID-19 measures in TSG, participants experienced positive emotions more intensely than negative emotions. Individual games showed a tendency towards higher values of positive emotions than the other games with higher motor interaction. As for negative emotions, cooperation-opposition games elicited more negative emotional appraisal. No significant differences in the experience of positive and negative emotions were observed when comparing competitive and non-competitive games, nor did they differ by sex. The results revealed that changes to the games did not alter the emotional experience, indicating that physical education practitioners can modify the games’ structural and functional aspects to achieve other pedagogical objectives without affecting students’ emotional behaviour.