CJ Mazzan

1/31/13
I came upon an article in EBSCOhost database called Differences between violent and
non-violent adolescents in terms of sports background and sport-related psychological
variables. This article relates to class because in chapter seven, the chapter was all about
violence in sports. I chose this article because I want to be a high school football coach when I
get out of college. I grew up in sports and saw a number of violent kids in the league. I chose this
article to find out what makes an adolescent in sports violent. This is so when I am a football
coach, I can teach my players not to be violent and to grow up with discipline. I want to be able
to keep my players out of trouble on and off the field.
The article is based off adolescents in Switzerland becoming more and more delinquent.
The number of adolescents in guilty criminal offense has rose about 2,000 from 1997 and 2007.
That is a major increase in just ten years. It is argued that sports have a favorable and powerful
influence on children like with their stress, well being, and self concept. Catharis Theory on
sports involvement is an effective way to reduce anger and aggressive feelings off the field or the
court. Sporting activities can lead to a release of strains and aggressions, which result in a
reduced readiness for violent behavior. It is argued that vigorous physical activity is healthy
because it allows participants to let off steam in acceptable ways, thereby decreasing
aggressiveness in everyday life. Although that theory sounds great, studies have shown that it is
invalid and may be better off in the opposite direction. In a more recent study, two different
models of the catharsis hypothesis are contrasted. The motor-charge model predicts that any kind
of vigorous sport activity reduces aggression from arising. According to the displacement model,
only activities consisting of aggressive elements, such as in some disciplines of martial arts and
game sports, cause a cathartic effect and lead to a decrease in the aggressive drive. Even though
all adolescents in this 3-year study showed an increase in aggressive behavior, the sport class
members mean increase in such behavior was less than that of the control group. In line with
this finding, Segrave and Hastad revealed that high school athletes exhibit significantly less
delinquent behavior than non-athletes. That is because high school athletes have to stay out of
trouble and keep their grades up so they can stay on the team. With regards to the setting in
which sport is played, Donaldson and Ronan revealed that adolescents who had practiced sports
for several years in an institutionally organized setting had fewer problems with peers and
showed less aggression and delinquency than adolescents who practiced sport in a non-organized
setting. Last thing is athletes in contact sports have slightly more aggression then athletes in noncontact sports. But contact sports provide a higher stress reliever for the athletes then non-contact
sports.
In conclusion, this article gave me a lot of insight on violence connected to sports. From
this article, I realized that sports are not the reason adolescents are violent. Its actually the exact
opposite. Sports give the athletes a main reliever with stress and violence because they take it all
out legally in sports. So, I feel confident that when I am a high school football coach, I can keep
my players out of trouble and disciplined off the field.

Works Cited
MOESCH, KARIN, DANIEL BIRRER, and ROLAND SEILER. "Differences Between
Violent And Non-Violent Adolescents In Terms Of Sport Background And Sport-Related
Psychological Variables." European Journal Of Sport Science 10.5 (2010): 319-328.
SPORTDiscus with Full Text. Web. 31 Mar. 2013.