Desenvolvimento de jovens atletas no rugby feminino: uma abordagem multidimensional

Abstract

Long-term athlete development (LTAD) has been used in several countries as a tool for structuring the sports career process of young athletes. In parallel, the literature has demonstrated the importance of considering the multidimensional context of sports performance. In women's rugby, the LTAD process is still little explored and, considering the importance of implementing continuous planning for the growth of the sport in the country, this thesis intends to bring theoretical and practical clarifications in order to contribute with essential information about characteristics and particularities for the development of young female rugby athletes. Thus, Vem Ser Rugby (VSR) is a project aimed at identifying girls with high physical performance for rugby, as well as LTAD for the sport, and seeks to understand this process in different dimensions. Therefore, the first chapter addresses the development trajectory of the VSR project, in which it initially presents the strategies for identifying and selecting young people for the project, including evaluation in public schools, selections promoted for interested young people and rugby tag festivals. Subsequently, the theoretical basis and the proposal of a DALP model of the VSR were presented, in which it describes integral elements of the continuous development, objectives, development topics and multidimensional aspects to be considered. Still, the project's routine, the multidisciplinary activities and the competitions that the project's athletes participated were presented, describing important aspects in the construction of the athletes' development environment. At the end, results and impacts that the VSR project accumulated over the first years were presented, highlighting quantitative data on participation, achievements and experiences. Chapters 2, 3 and 4 deal with studies about different dimensions related to the development of athletes, including psychosocial, nutritional and physical performance aspects. The second chapter presents an investigation of the relationship between experiences in the VSR project and competitive anxiety (cognitive anxiety, somatic anxiety and self-confidence). The results showed that cognitive skills (highlighted by the accumulation of creative skills) are positively related to self-confidence and negatively related to somatic anxiety, and negative experiences were positively correlated with somatic anxiety. In the next chapter, the morphological profile of athletes included in the VSR was compared with athletes who were called up to compose the Brazilian youth rugby sevens team (BRA), and no significant differences were identified between the groups. Still, the chapter presented a description about the food consumption and knowledge about nutrition of the VSR athletes, identifying an inadequate intake of macronutrients, but a satisfactory average of knowledge. Finally, the last chapter compared the girls from the VSR and the BRA regarding physical performance in aptitude tests, as well as the demands of playing in a national championship. The results showed that there were no differences in several evaluated variables, except for linear velocity and sprint distance in the rugby sevens match, with higher values for the BRA group. Therefore, this thesis presented important proposals and evidence to contribute to the development of female rugby athletes.