ABSTRACT
Talented athletes, i.e., those who perform better than their peers and have the potential to reach the top (Howe et al., 1998; Helsen et al., 2000), are often selected for a talent development programme. The ultimate goal of these programmes is to guide talented youth athletes towards elite athletes in adulthood. To reach this goal, the ‘right’ athletes should be identified to enter the development programme. It is highly important to look further than the current performance and give extra attention to the potential and possible future performance level of youth athletes (Elferink-Gemser et al., 2011). Unfortunately, it is very difficult to predict future level of performances, especially when the timespan to predict increases (Baker et al., 2012; Vaeyens et al., 2008). It is therefore often that athletes who may have the potential to reach the top are not identified as such (i.e., false-negatives) by coaches and scouts and the other way around in that athletes are identified as talented whereas they do not have the potential to reach the top (i.e., false-positives). The first scenario will decrease the chance for players of reaching elite level because they do not receive the extra facilities to develop themselves. Whether players are selected for a talent development programme mainly depends on the judgment of coaches. This indicates that coaches ought to be able to judge whether or not someone is a talented athlete. However, the question is whether this really is the case. Are coaches able to make a good judgment about the current and future performance level of their athletes and which characteristics are important for their judgment? To investigate this, the aim of this study is to examine the relation between coaches’ overall judgment about the youth level of performances and the actual achieved performance level of players when they have become adults (i.e., ≥ 18 years). In addition, the relation between the predicted performance level and the actual achieved performance level of players will be investigated. It is also aimed to investigate which characteristics underlie the overall judgment of coaches about the performance level of young, talented basketball players.
