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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1572597
This article is part of the Research TopicMental Health in Recreational and Elite SportsView all 7 articles
From the European Youth Olympics Festival to Professional Sport The Level of Athlete Dropout -A Retrospective Cohort Study
Provisionally accepted- 1Hungarian University of Sports Science, Budapest, Hungary
- 2Hungarian Olympic Committee, Budapest, Hungary
- 3Faculty of Health Sciences, Semmelweis University, Budapest, Hungary
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Background: Globally, the dropout rate among young athletes, which is influenced by a range of complex and interconnected factors, tends to rise significantly when adolescence starts.The present retrospective cohort study aimed to explore the characteristics and extent of dropout in youth sports in Hungary.We analysed the status of 409 athletes who participated in the summer editions of the European Youth Olympic Festival (EYOF) between 2009 and 2019, assessing their athletic status five years later. Specifically, we examined the associations between dropout rates and factors such as gender, types of sport and relative age quartiles.Results: Our findings reveal that dropout rates were higher in individual sports compared to team sports. Additionally, within individual sports, athletes born in the second age quartile had a slightly higher dropout rate, while those born in the third quartile experienced a slightly lower rate compared to the other quartiles.These insights contribute to a deeper understanding of the factors influencing dropout in youth sports.
Keywords: dropout, youth sport, EYOF, RAE, junior-to-senior transition
Received: 07 Feb 2025; Accepted: 17 Apr 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Kovács, Pignitzky, Bartha and Takács. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Krisztina Kovács, Hungarian University of Sports Science, Budapest, Hungary
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