Youth Sport Players' Enjoyment in Team Practice Sessions: The Daily Impact of Coaches and Basic Psychological Need Satisfaction.

Sport enjoyment can be a quality marker of players' sport experience, signaling a basic need-supportive, psychologically healthy sport context linked to better well-being and health. Yet, little is known about its day-to-day variability in team practice. Fifty Norwegian adolescent female handball players (M = 14.57, SD = 1.03) completed brief questionnaires before, during, and after 11-12 practice sessions across 4 weeks. A two-level Bayesian model estimated within-person, same-occasion associations between perceived need-supportive and need-thwarting coach behaviors, basic psychological need satisfaction (autonomy, competence, and relatedness), and sport enjoyment. In practice sessions, when players perceived more need-supportive (β = 0.116) and less need-thwarting (β = -0.064) coach behaviors, they reported higher enjoyment. Of the basic needs, only competence need satisfaction was associated with sport enjoyment (β = 0.069). In practice, reducing need-thwarting coach behaviors, increasing need-supportive coach behaviors, and creating competence-satisfying team practice sessions can help improve how enjoyable team practice feels for adolescent team-sport players.