Exploring Competitive Anxiety and Personality in Early Specializing and Sampling Pewee Boys Hockey Players

Athletes who specialize early often invest more into their sport from a young age, thus it has been suggested early specializers may feel greater pressures to perform, and may have higher levels of anxiety. This study focused on better understanding competitive anxiety and personality, in relation to early specializers and non-early specializers. Hierarchal regression analyses revealed a significant relationship between CTA and CSA in Step 1. In Step 2, no significant additional variance was found for any of the predictor variables (i.e., OCEAN) or for the moderator variable (i.e., early specialization). In Step 3 no additional variance was accounted for by the interaction term for all predictor variables except agreeableness. The interaction of agreeableness and early specialization accounted for significant additional variance in CSA (R2 =. 035, p<. 05). Results highlight the need for future investigation into the role of personality and early specialization on CSA.