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Despite high rates of early childhood (<6 years) sport participation, limited research captures children’s experiences or parents’ motives for children’s engagement during this time. This study aimed to identify the sport take-up, pathways, and patterns of engagement among 3-5 year-old children participating in organized sport programming in a major Canadian city. Data were gathered through external observations of five programs (i.e. multi-sport, soccer, hockey, gymnastics, rugby), and 10 semi-structured parent interviews (Mage= 36.4; six female). Results provide novel insight into preschool-aged children’s sport and unstructured sport/physical activity habits, while highlighting common program elements (i.e. fundamental movement skills, sport-specific skills, deliberate play, free play, competition). Findings suggest that many existing life-span sport participation and development models do not align with delivery of or experiences within preschooler programs; continued research is warranted to determine what pathways, engagement patterns, and program activities are optimal for preschooler development, in turn, contributing to modified models.
Harlow et al. (Fri,) studied this question.