Performing performance: young aspiring athletes' presentation of athletic identity.

Youths are in the process of figuring out answers to the question "who am I?" and young athletes are searching for athletic identity in interaction with their friends, teammates, coaches, and so on. This study explores athletes' presentations of athletic identity based on 24 interviews with ambitious young athletes attending upper secondary sport schools. Anchored in Goffman's theory of the self and the presentation of the self, as well as Markus and Nurius' concept of possible selves, the study views identity as socially constructed in interaction.