Olivia H. D. Christendat, Haley H. Smith, Stuart Wilson, Jean Côté

Children are increasingly dropping out of sport due to its focus on performance outcomes instead of personal interest, fun, and enjoyment. Interest is a motivational state described as an individual’s desire to devote effort and attention to an activity or object, which typically progresses from being situational—fleeting and spontaneous—to being individual interest that becomes internalized and well supported (Chen & Wang, 2017). Within physical education, Chen and colleagues (1999) created a five-dimensional construct encompassing novelty, challenge, exploration intention, attention demand, and instant enjoyment, which is used to measure the triggering of situational interest. Like physical education teachers, coaches are well-positioned to design learning environments that trigger athletes’ interest. However, despite extensive investigation in educational domains, very little literature has examined interest in the context of sport (Smith et al., 2026). The purpose of this proposed study is to examine the conditions that coaches of engaged athletes implement in competitive youth sport to support athletes’ development of situational interest. Ten model coaches from youth swimming teams (athletes aged 10-12) across Canada will participate in individual semi-structured interviews. These interviews will explore the reasoning behind each coach’s development of their swimming practices in relation to the five dimensions of situational interest. The interviews will be audio-recorded and transcribed verbatim, after which thematic analysis will be used to extract themes and codes for analysis. By understanding how coaches trigger situational interest in their athletes, we can work to increase participation rates that continue from childhood into adulthood.