Athlete Career Transition Assessment

Athlete career transition assessment uses conceptual models of how athletes adapt to leaving sport to evaluate whether a given transition -- above all retirement -- is likely to be navigated healthily or to tip into crisis. Jim Taylor and Bruce Ogilvie's 1994 model of adaptation to retirement traces the whole process: the causes that initiate it, the developmental and identity factors that shape adjustment, the coping resources available, the resulting quality of adaptation, and the interventions that may be needed when distress arises. Natalia Stambulova's athletic career transition model reframes the transition as a matter of balancing its demands against the athlete's resources and barriers, predicting either a successful transition or a crisis. Together these frameworks structure an assessment that diagnoses why a transition is happening, what the athlete brings to it, and how well they are coping.