Antonia Cattle, Kathryn Johnston, Joseph Baker

Over the past few decades, various development pathways have been proposed to describe how athletes progress through sport systems. Generally, these pathways assume an athlete is ‘fully developed’ upon reaching the final stages and that development simply ends. Recent scholarship challenges this notion, suggesting development continues, however the focus of development moves towards maximizing short-term performance outcomes (i.e., game to game) rather than long-term growth, which is typically shaped by organizational demands and high-stakes environments. This gap between theoretical pathways and the reality of professional sport becomes particularly evident in systems with formal minor-league structures. Athletes drafted into these systems are given the chance to refine their skills and develop performance to meet the standards of established professional players, yet the development occurring in these environments remains poorly understood and unrecognized. Despite their central role in talent-pipelines, development in the minor league is rarely integrated into existing developmental models, ultimately creating a gap between theory and reality. To address this gap, we plan to explore the developmental changes associated with participation in minor leagues through mixed methods investigations drawing on expert knowledge and real player data in both hockey and baseball. This study will build on recent work in the field by conceptualizing the developmental demands, opportunities, and changes at this level of sport, providing a more accurate representation of professional level development, ultimately informing theoretical models and organizational practice.