Stress and burnout among collegiate tennis coaches

The purpose of this investigation was to examine stress and burnout among collegiate tennis coaches. Three alternative models of stress-mediated relationships between personal/situational variables (hardiness, coaching issues, competitive level, gender, trait anxiety, initiating and consideration leadership styles) and burnout among men (n = 163) and women (n = 98) collegiate head tennis coaches were examined. Preliminary analysis revealed that the tennis coaches in this investigation were suffering from levels of burnout similar to those of other helping professionals working in higher education (Maslach & Jackson, 1986). A gender-by-competition-level (2 X 2) MANOVA on study variables revealed a significant main effect for gender but not for competition level. The women had a higher tendency than the men did to find coaching issues stressful. Structural equation modeling revealed that the stress-mediation model, also featuring direct effects of personality/dispositional variables on burnout, accounted for observed relationships in data more adequately than the other alternative models did.