Winning, motivational climate, and young athletes’ competitive experiences: some notable sex differences

Is winning everything? We investigated the importance of team success and motivational climate on male and female athletes’ evaluative reactions to their athletic experience. Seasonal won-lost record had a less pervasive influence on athletes’ reactions than coaching behaviors. Notable sex differences were observed, with winning exhibiting stronger relations to attitudes for boys than girls. Although boys and girls responded positively to mastery climates, girls responded negatively to ego climates. Extreme-groups analyses of athletes experiencing strong mastery or ego climates revealed that winning was minimally related to evaluative reactions within a strong mastery climate. In boys, however, enjoyment playing on the team and liking for the coach/teammates were strongly related to winning percentage if they experienced an ego climate. Results are interpreted within the context of a "goodness of fit" of both winning and ego climate to previously reported sex differences in sport socialization and in personality and motivational factors.