Fatores de estresse e enfrentamento de treinadores e profissionais do futebol de categoria de base durante a Pandemia da COVID-19

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the stress and coping factors for youth football coaches and professionals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Participated in the study 34 coaches and professionals, who are trained in Physical Education who have been working as a coach or professional in youth football for more than two years. Data from both sexes were collected with a mean age (± Standard Deviation) of 36.36 (± 8.13). Sampling was performed for convenience, participants were invited through a link that gives access to Google Forms. Initially, a questionnaire aimed at sociodemographic, sports and health characteristics was applied. To analyze the stress factors and coping strategies used during the pandemic, a questionnaire specifically designed for this study was used, with 20 questions about stressors and 20 questions about coping strategies during the pandemic. To answer each of the 20 questions, the participant chose one of five possible answers, on a Likert-type scale, where 1 is totally disagree and 5 is totally agree. For data analysis, descriptive statistics and inferential tests were used. It was observed that the factors that most generated stress in coaches and professionals were the drop in the performance of athletes with (4.18 ± 0.83), followed by the reduction of time to train the team, (4.09 ± 0.93) and the difficulty to maintain the athletes' physical and mental conditioning (4.03 ± 1.04). The coping strategies that had the highest agreement were focusing on the good things in life (4.5 ± 0.56), seeking to be closer to the players to help them (4.45 ± 0.61), and seeking more experience through all difficulties (4.44 ± 0.56). The present study will be able to help coaches and professionals of youth football on the best coping strategies to alleviate stress during similar adversities.