Abstract
The purpose of the study was to determine the factors influencing the performance of college athletes by investigating when they began their athletic careers, when they felt their own performance improved the most, and their other experiences in sport.
The subjects were 690 college athletes (364 males and 326 females) who had played sports from childhood until their college years. The survey was conducted from May to July 2023 in the form of a web questionnaire using Google Forms. The results show that many of the college athletes had begun competing by elementary school and realized their own peak performance during high school. Many of them considered their start timing as “appropriate” and recognized the importance of starting earlier in their athletic development. Three factors were shown to have an important influence on their competitive performance: “coaches”, “teammates/rivals”, and “training time/amount”. These factors were shown to have a significant impact on both positive and negative aspects. These results provide valuable knowledge about the factors that influence the competitive performance of collegiate athletes.
