Relationship of athletic sports with sense of coherence and mood states in male senior high school students: comparing athletes from a school soccer club and J-League youth teams

Both school and public sports clubs play an important role in the development of athletes in Japan. Although some studies have investigated the relationship of mental health and numerous factors, including level of athletic performance, and years of experience with sports, limited studies have examined the differences among athletic organizations for adolescents. Focusing on soccer, the most popular sport among Japanese adolescents, we conducted the present investigation with participants from a school soccer club and J-League youth teams. This study aimed to reveal the relationship of athletic sports with coping skills and psychological distress in male high school students, with special reference to differences among athletic organizations. 　This study was conducted in a boys’ senior high school and 4 J-League youth teams, from April to June 2017. The high school has a strong soccer club that has regularly won a national level tournament. We selected students who belonged to the school soccer club（n = 108）and those who did not belong to a school or public sports club（the do not belong to a sports club group, n = 333）. Moreover, students who belonged to school soccer club were divided into 2 groups based on whether they had won a prize or not in a previous tournament larger than a prefecture level competition（school soccer club without a winning experience, n = 50; school soccer club with a winning experience, n = 58）. For the J-League youth team, we used 51 students’ data for the analysis. 　To evaluate the participants’ ability to cope with stress, we used the three-item sense of coherence（SOC）scale. For psychological distress, we used the Japanese version of the profile of mood states（POMS）short form, and we calculated the total mood disturbance（TMD）score. To compare SOC and TMD scores between the groups, we used the Kruskal-Wallis test and Bonferroni post hoc tests. 　The analysis revealed significant group differences in the SOC score. Specifically, the school soccer club with a winning experience group and the J-League youth group had higher scores than those of the group that did not belong to a sports club. There was no significant difference between the scores of the school soccer club without a winning experience group and the other groups. Further, there were significant group differences in the TMD score, with the J-League youth group exhibiting lower score as compared to all other groups. 　This study indicated that, regardless of athletic organization, male senior high school students who played soccer at a high level had higher scores related to coping skills as compared to students who did not belong to a sports club. Meanwhile, psychological distress scores differed across athletic organizations, with students in the J-League youth team exhibiting favorable mood states.