Developmental tasks of adolescent elite handball players

According to the concept of developmental tasks, every person has to solve different developmental tasks in certain phases of his or her life to develop successfully as a person. As young elite athletes have to solve sports-related developmental tasks in addition to the normative developmental tasks, the aim of our study was to compare the relevance of different developmental tasks in young elite handball players of different age groups. An online survey was conducted with 113 players of the German Handball Federation national teams (year of birth 1997 and older). Results revealed that the athletes recognized several sports-related developmental tasks and also perceived some relevance for them. Only very few differences could be found in relevance of the developmental tasks between the age groups. Male and female players also differed only in a few aspects. These results give a first hint to the fact that young elite athletes receive additional developmental tasks from the sport system and can only develop slowly on certain normative developmental tasks. Consequences of these findings for researchers and practitioners in sport are discussed.