The coach-athlete relationship of young talented athletes from Bosnia and Herzegovina

This study is focused on getting feedback on positive and negative aspects of coach-athletes relationship and defining the quality of this relationship, as well as their implications to both coaches' and athletes' work. The multivariate analysis of variance shows that the interaction between athletes' gender and type of sport is significant for all three subtests (social support, depth and conflict) of the Quality Relationship Inventory questionnaire. Significant differences are noticed with young athletes receiving social support by their coaches, while individual athletes have shown a higher level of social support than their peers from team sports. The results of this study suggest that male individual sports athletes shows tenacious connection (depth) with their coaches, while the situation for the team sports is reversed. Also, female athletes have shown a higher level of conflict with their coaches in individual sports, whilst the level of conflict with male athletes is more common in team sports. Coach's support is of a high importance due to a significantly weakened relationship between athletes and parents in the age of adolescence. The coach is a person who has to play more active role in overall young athletes' personality development and thus the qualification of the staff working with younger age categories has to be at the highest level of their competences.