The Importance of Friendship Groups in Sports

“As a hockey coach and player the importance of friendship groups is clear to me. Personally I have been lucky enough to form many friendship groups through hockey. I was even lucky enough to meet my husband through hockey. However, this isn’t a blog about my personal life or even my wedding day! I just wanted to share some recent reflections and changes I have made to my own coaching to focus on the importance of friendship groups.

The youth insight pack from Sport England and a recent report from Street Games talks about friendship groups and the social element of sport being critical to engaging and retaining participants. The Street Games report looks at this from a female perspective and from their poll of 1000 young women they found nearly two thirds would shun any sport or physical activity if their friends weren’t involved. The youth insight report highlights how social time is important during a session and it is important to help young people connect.”

Read the full post here.