ATHLETES COPING WITH THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: THE ROLE OF SELF-COMPASSION AND COGNITIVE APPRAISAL

Coping with the COVID-19 pandemic has implications for an athlete’s mental well-being. This thesis examined the influence of self-compassion on college athletes coping with the COVID-19 pandemic through the mediator of cognitive appraisal and explored their experience through open-ended reflections. The prospective design involved 90 athletes completing two online surveys 1-week apart measuring self-compassion, cognitive appraisal, coping strategies and their experiences during the pandemic. The PROCESS macro was used to examine the relationship of self-compassion and coping with cognitive appraisal as a mediator. A qualitative thematic analysis was used to explore the reflection responses. Self-compassion had an indirect negative effect on avoidance-focused coping by appraising their sport situation as less of a threat (95%CI = -0.20 to -0.001) and had a total effect on emotion-focused coping (95%CI = 0.02 to 0.40). Based on the thematic analysis, athletes described many raw emotions (e.g., hopelessness) and a variety of coping strategies (e.g., social support) in response to the pandemic. Self-compassion demonstrated promising benefits to athletes dealing with the challenging situation of the pandemic