Bonds and breakups: A qualitative exploration of strategies for forming, maintaining, and dissolving athletic partnerships in dyadic sports

Emily V. Pike, Lindsay R. Duncan

Although research on the coach-athlete relationship is prevalent, research examining athlete-athlete dyads is scarce. In dyadic sports, the dynamics of the dyad are critical, however there is lack of guidance around forming, maintaining, and dissolving partnerships. Athletes often enter partnerships with little knowledge of how to foster them, potentially leading to pre-emptive partnership dissolutions, and difficulty with finding a new athletic partner. Consequentially, athletes are poorly equipped to handle transition periods between partners since the process leading up to, during, and following a partnership is unclear and largely independent. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore the experiences of dyadic sport athletes during transitions resulting from partnership dissolution. We recruited ten high-performance figure skating (n=5), synchronized diving (n=1) and beach volleyball athletes (n=4) aged 18 years or older who have had a minimum of two athletic partners. Athletes participated in one semi-structured interview where they described their experiences leading up to, during, and after the dissolution of their athletic partnerships. Through reflexive thematic analysis, a higher order theme of experiential learning was derived, whereby athletes developed skills for managing their partnerships and partnership transitions through trial and error. Insufficient resources are provided from coaches and sport organizations to prepare athletes for navigating the unique challenges of partnership dissolution. The present study has implications on how coaches and sport organizations can better equip dyadic sport athletes for navigating athlete-athlete relationships and transitions that result from their dissolution.