Intercollegiate coaches' perceptions of the knowledge and strategies used with elite culturally diverse athletes

The purpose of this study was to identify the knowledge and successful strategies utilized by intercollegiate team sport coaches who have worked with a large number of international athletes. Six head coaches were selected to participate in a semi-structured open-ended interview. At the time of data collection, each participant was coaching a Division I NCAA university female soccer team and had coached at least two international athletes per season in the last five years or at least 10 international student athletes throughout their head coaching careers. An interview guide was created exclusively for this study. The analysis of the data was based on the tenets of grounded theory and followed an inductive process of theory development (Strauss & Corbin, 1990). Using the CM and the MML as frameworks, a modified model was designed to portray the cultural perspective of the coaching process. Seven categories indicated the coaches' knowledge of cultural diversity on both athlete development and team success. The categories were called International Athlete Development and International Athlete Performance and Satisfaction, which revealed the coaches' perceptions on international athlete and personal development; (3) Environmental Context, which discussed the American dimension of coaching intercollegiate female soccer athletes; (4) Social and Team Structure, which was the implementation of cultural coaching knowledge, and the following categories; (5) Coach Philosophies and Experiences; (6) International Athlete Individual Aspects and (7) Game Preparation and Game Day, which defined coaches cultural understanding as it relates to aspects of training and competition. This study provided a deeper understanding of cultural coaching competence, leading to the recommendation of effective strategies and interventions for coaching culturally diverse teams and athletes