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BRIEF RESEARCH REPORT article

Front. Sports Act. Living
Sec. Sport Psychology
Volume 6 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fspor.2024.1507386
This article is part of the Research Topic 40 Years of Relative Age Effects in Sport: Lessons from the Past and Directions for the Future View all 7 articles

Relative age effects in ice hockey extends to coaching

Provisionally accepted
Simon Grondin Simon Grondin 1Daniel Fortin-Guichard Daniel Fortin-Guichard 1,2,3*Jean Lemoyne Jean Lemoyne 4François Trudeau François Trudeau 4Joe Baker Joe Baker 3
  • 1 Laval University, Quebec, Quebec, Canada
  • 2 McGill University, Montreal, Canada
  • 3 University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
  • 4 Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Date of birth influences the chances of success in sports. Compared to players born just before a cutoff date for marking the admissibility in a category (age groups), players born soon after are overrepresented. However, it is not yet known whether the effect of date of birth in sports applies beyond the players' active participation in the game. The aim of the study was to determine whether there is a date of birth effect among ice hockey's coaches. The birthdates of 3380 coaches in minor league hockey for the 2023-2024 season were obtained from Hockey Québec. The investigation indicated that people born in the first half of the year were more likely to become minor hockey coaches than those born in the second half. This significant birthdate effect is observed with coaches born in 1980s (53.42% vs. 46.58%) and after 1989 (55.73% vs. 44.27%), but not with coaches born before 1980 where the effect tended to reverse. This finding is interpreted as a consequence of the birthdate effect during the development as a hockey player and suggests a loss of potential coaches to the ice hockey system.

    Keywords: relative age effect, coaching, Sport, ice-hockey, Birthdate effect

    Received: 07 Oct 2024; Accepted: 19 Dec 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Grondin, Fortin-Guichard, Lemoyne, Trudeau and Baker. 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: Daniel Fortin-Guichard, McGill University, Montreal, Canada

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