Team sports provide a unique context for youth development. Athletes and their teams engage in a wide range of social interactions with peers, coaches, family members, and other people in the community. These interactions help athletes develop interpersonal skills and lifelong values, including structure, accountability, tenacity, perseverance, goal-orientation, self-discipline and leadership.
In addition, team sport environments promote mentorship between older players and younger participants. Coaches in particular can be instrumental in mentoring a young athlete.
Athletes in team sports also acquire a number of important emotional skills, which may impact their work and school performance. These include improved short-term memory, enhanced creativity, more effective problem solving and a better mood.
Some of the most popular team sports are soccer, basketball, ice hockey and American football. In each of these sports, there is a maximum number of players allowed on each side of the field and a goalkeeper.
The economics of team sports involve teams that pool their labor (mainly players), capital and land to produce a product that can be sold to gain revenue to cover operating costs. These are usually club-based competitions arranged by governing bodies.
There are numerous tracking systems available to track and quantify the training and competition characteristics of various team sports. However, the selection of metrics to profile athletes is a critical decision that requires careful consideration by practitioners. Practitioners should select metrics that are appropriate for their particular sport context, including a variety of time analysis techniques and levels of metric significance.