Excellence fulfilled? On the unique developmental needs of professional athletes.

While the term "athlete development" has been used to capture the changes (physical, psychological, etc.) that occur as an athlete moves from initial sport engagement to elite performance, much of the research in this area has focused on earlier stages of the pathway, with very little work examining the highest levels of sport. Considering a person's bio-psycho-social development continues through adulthood, the limited attention to development for athletes at higher competitive levels is perhaps surprising.

Predicting Seasonal Performance in Professional Sport: A 30-Year Analysis of Sports Illustrated Predictions.

In 2017, Sports Illustrated (SI) made headlines when their remarkable prediction from 2014 that the Houston Astros (a team in one of the lowest Major League Baseball divisional rankings) would win the World Series, came true. The less-publicised story was that in 2017, SI predicted the Los Angeles Dodgers to win the Major League Baseball (MLB) title. Assessing the forecasting accuracy of experts is critical as it explores the difficulty and limitations of forecasts and can help illuminate how predictions may shape sociocultural notions of sport in society.

Storm Clouds on the Horizon: On the Emerging Need to Tighten Selection Policies.

Athlete selection is fundamental in elite sport, occurring regularly throughout an athlete's development. Research in this area reveals the accuracy of these decisions is questionable in even the most elite sport environments and athletes are increasingly disputing these decisions as unfair and punitive. As a countermeasure to these dispute and arbitration practices, many elite sport systems have created policies where coaches must outline and stand behind the criteria used for their selection decisions.

To draft or not to draft? A systematic review of North American sports' entry draft.

In theory, professional sport "entry drafts" are designed to promote parity by granting poorly performing teams with early selections and winning teams with later selections. While this process has intentions to "level the playing field", mixed findings exist in the literature. The aim of this review is to identify and synthesize the literature examining the efficacy of the draft for professional, North American sport leagues.

Eliminating buyer's remorse: An examination of the sunk cost fallacy in the National Hockey League draft.

The sunk cost effect describes the tendency to escalate one's commitment toward a certain endeavor, despite diminishing returns, as a consequence of irreversible resource expenditure that has already been made (Organ Behav Hum Decis Process. 1985;35:124). This effect has been observed in a number of professional sports leagues, wherein teams escalate their commitment toward players selected early in the draft, regardless of performance outcomes, due to large financial commitments invested in them (J Sports Econom.

Accuracy from the slot: Evaluating draft selections in the National Hockey League.

The National Hockey League (NHL) entry draft is a process wherein teams make sequential selections from a pool of eligible players. Given the young age of prospects, drafting requires long-term forecasting of future performance under a high level of uncertainty. This study assessed the selection accuracy across all seven rounds of the draft, as well as between lottery and non-lottery picks within the first round.

Heterogeneity in Community Size Effects: Exploring Variations in the Production of National Hockey League Draftees Between Canadian Cities.

Previous research has explored 'community size effects' in a multitude of sporting and regional contexts and has shown that athletes are more likely to originate from small-medium population size categories, and less likely to originate from very small or large ones. However, it is not clear whether the production of athletes is homogenous within population size categories. Place of birth data were collected for all Canadian born hockey players drafted into the National Hockey League (NHL) from 2000-2014 from British Columbia ( = 192), Alberta ( = 218), Saskatchewan and Manitoba ( = 216), Ontario ( = 561), Quebec ( = 241), and the Atlantic Provinces ( = 74).

Population density and proximity to junior developmental teams affect the development of National Hockey League draftees.

Inconsistencies in community size effects found between and within countries (Baker et al Eur J Sport Sci. 2009;9:329-339; Bruner et al J Sports Sci. 2011;29:1337-1344; Wattie et al J Sports Sci.