Collegiate Athletes’ and Coaches’ Communicative Constitution of Resilience: A Case Study

Resilience processes are communicative in nature and vital to the wellbeing and success of athletic personnel and organizations. However, the communicative components of resilience-building are largely ignored in sport scholarship and practice. This study seeks to bridge that gap by using the communication theory of resilience as a sensitizing concept to develop a thorough understanding of communicative resilience-building processes in athletics. Semi-structured in-depth interviews with members of a Division I college baseball team were analyzed using thematic co-occurrence analysis. Findings indicate that collegiate athletes and coaches experience resilience-building as a combination of mental toughness (i.e., persistence and discipline) and resourcefulness (i.e., social support, vulnerability, (self-)reflection, and positive self-talk). Findings also reveal three relationships between co-occurring themes. First, participants who focused on the process over the outcome of persistence developed greater (self-)awareness and found better solutions to the issues they faced. Second, providing social support to other network members motivated participants to regulate their own emotions and to remain disciplined amid adversity. Third, participants who communicated their vulnerability were empowered to seek out social support as a partial solution to disruptive events. These findings demonstrate the communicative and collective nature of resilience processes and inform suggestions for resilience-building in athletics.