Thriving or Surviving : A Look at UBC Student-Athlete Thriving
Creators: name: Butler, Miranda
name: Gill, Jenna
name: Sever, Shae
name: Gauthier, Lindsay
name: Gasser, Anika
Publisher: name: The University of British Columbia
Year: 2024

description: This study examined thriving in relation to three categories: mental thriving, performance thriving and academic thriving of varsity athletes that attend the University of British Columbia (UBC). This study utilized the Qualtrics survey platform to collect responses from varsity athletes who were currently in their sports’ respective competitive seasons. The sports included under this criteria were men’s rowing, hockey, rugby, swimming, basketball, track and field, and women’s rugby 15s and 7s athletes, basketball, track and field, hockey, rowing, and softball. Participants answered questions related to the three defined categories of thriving in relation to different periods of the competitive season. Additionally, participants were presented with lists of different resources already provided by UBC Athletics and asked which, if any, resources they used, and if they experienced any barriers while accessing the resources. This data was then thematically analyzed and the Likert type scale data was quantified into means and standard deviations. Findings suggested that the majority of respondents had minimal engagement with academic support and experienced minimal barriers when accessing the resources. However, respondents did suggest that there was minimal promotion or incentive to engage with different academic resources. Next, when reflecting upon performance thriving, participants seemed to be significantly more engaged with performance support. This included appointments with doctors, athletic therapists (ATs), massage therapists and strength and conditioning (S&amp;C) coaches. Participants suggested that barriers were faced when trying to access the aforementioned opportunities. Similarly, respondents also seemed to suggest barrieres were more common when trying to access mental health performance skills. Based on our findings, we have four suggestions for UBC Athletics to help promote varsity athletes’ thriving throughout the duration of a competitive season. Firstly, we have recommended that UBC Athletics further develop the T-Bird app to form a centralized base where student athletes can find information on a variety of mental, physical and academic resources. This centralization may be helpful to streamline information and for accessing resources. Next, we suggest that a calendar feature be added to this app, which could be utilized by individual teams to inform athletes of group study sessions, important academic dates and deadlines. The utilization of a calendar may encourage time management strategies, as well as, increase awareness surrounding academic resources. Thirdly, we recommend that they update reviews of the effectiveness and accessibility of the booking process for physical therapy, athletic therapy and doctor triage. Lastly, we recommend that UBC Athletics performs a longitudinal study on athletes thriving to better understand how thriving changes throughout a competitive season. Disclaimer: “UBC SEEDS provides students with the opportunity to share the findings of their studies, as well as their opinions, conclusions and recommendations with the UBC community. The reader should bear in mind that this is a student project/report and is not an official document of UBC. Furthermore readers should bear in mind that these reports may not reflect the current status of activities at UBC. We urge you to contact the research persons mentioned in a report or the SEEDS Coordinator about the current status of the subject matter of a project/report.”