Can coach education foster youth flourishing? A multi-informant evaluation of the PREPAR coach education programme in youth rugby

Sport-based Positive Youth Development (PYD) research has focused on explicit processes, while implicit processes operating through the practice climate remain underexplored. Recent developments call for stronger integration of PYD with positive mental health outcomes. Adopting a practitioner–researcher perspective within a national rugby federation, this research evaluated a coach education intervention targeting implicit processes, with youth flourishing as a key outcome. A mixed-methods design involved coaches (N = 180) and players (N = 799) from grassroots youth rugby across three groups differing in intervention exposure (control, sensitization, PREPAR). Coaches’ and players’ perceptions of the training climate, players’ PYD and flourishing, assessed at three time points, were analyzed using linear mixed-effects models. Semi-structured interviews with PREPAR coaches (n = 16) explored perceptions of the intervention and its transfer into practice. Quantitative results showed changes in coaches’ self-reported PYD-supportive practices in the PREPAR group, which were not reflected in players’ perceptions or flourishing. Qualitative findings indicated that coaches valued the intervention, while identifying contextual constraints to implementation. This divergence between coach- and athlete-reported outcomes highlights the complexity of influencing implicit developmental processes through coach education alone and may reflect an intention–enactment gap, temporal dynamics and the importance of organizational alignment.