The role of coaches' passion in youth ice hockey players perceived motivational climate and feeling states

Using the dualistic model of passion (Vallerand et.al., 2003), this study investigated the role of ice hockey coaches’ passion in players perceived motivational climate and feeling states. Furthermore, it was hypothesized that coaches’ harmonious and obsessive passion would have a relationship with players feelings directly and via coach-created motivational climate. Participants were 25 ice hockey coach-team dyads (N = 25 coaches, N=171 players) engaged in Finnish male U16 – U20 leagues on two highest levels. Participants completed self-assessed questionnaires online independently. Coaches completed questionnaire assessing harmonious and obsessive passion, while players questionnaire assessed coach-created motivational climates (empowering / disempowering) and feeling states (i.e., functional volitional and dysfunctional volitional). Results from structural equation modeling, path analysis and multi-level analysis revealed that harmonious passion predicted positively players functional feeling states through empowering motivational climate, while obsessive passion predicted players dysfunctional feeling states through disempowering motivational climate. Direct positive effect of harmonious passion to functional states were not observed, while direct negative effect of obsessive passion to dysfunctional feeling states was observed. These finding provided preliminary insight into direct role of coaches’ passion towards athletes feeling states, and how perceived motivational climate is related with experienced feeling states.