Where are We Going?: Narrative Accounts of Female High School Student-Athletes in the Republic of Korea

Abstract

Previous research on female athletes' burnout found that female athletes experienced higher level of burnout than their male counterpart. However, the studies were not able to identify what actually caused such higher level of burnout among female athletes. The purpose of the study was to explore the sources and contexts of burnout among female track and field athletes in a high school. Total of 13 female student-athletes were interviewed to portray their stories of burnouts using narrative inquiry. The burnout sources of female student athletes were identified into three dimensions: stories of physiological burnout as personal dimension, stories of relational burnout as interpersonal dimension, and stories of structural burnout as institutional dimension. In this study, it is indicated that most of the causes in the above three dimensions basically came from multiple role conflicts, future career foreclosure, and invisible female coach recruitment.