Relative age effect on success in tennis competition in the older age-school children

Abstract

BACKGROUND: The theory of relative age effect assumes that children and adolescents - athletes born at the beginning of the calendar year in sports competitions are more successful than those who were born in the later months of the same year. This percentage is based on advantage of fitness, morphological and psychological assumptions of the older athletes. AIM: The research objective of the present study was to verify the assumption of competitive success of older players in the elite boys and girls tennis groups in the older school age. METHODOLOGY: The data from groups of 13 year old boys and girls (13 years and 0 months to 13 years and 11 months) were included into the analysis. These players were registered in the first one hundred ranking of International Tennis Federation (ITF) according to the total number of ranking points in each year during the period 2007-2011 (500 boys, 500 girls). An ANOVA was used for analysis with a total ranking score as an indicator of competitive success with the age factor (12 levels = 12 months of birth) (α = .05). The same analysis was used in sub-groups of boys, respectively girls, registered in ITF separately for each year of the period 2007-2011. Dates of birth of children were obtained from official sources of ITF. In the event of the significance factor of age we performed a simple regression analysis depending on the number of ITF points on the month of birth (p < .05). Analyses were processed in SPSS 21 software (IBM, USA). RESULTS: The analysis showed no significance of age, respective of the month of birth on the total number of points in a boys group (n = 500) (p = .624) and girls group (n = 500) (p = .152) from ITF ranking during five-year period. No significance was found in the boys' groups (n = 100), respective girls' groups (n = 100) registered in ITF ranking in each year of the five-year period. The exception was found only in a boys group in 2007 (p = .021), and significant regression relationship between the number of points and the month of birth (p = .042). DISCUSION: The reached conclusions may have several explanations. There most likely appears to be differences in the development of somatic and motor assumptions in this development period, which are independent of the date of birth (biological age) and also the homogeneity of the groups associated with a small age-range. CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that the hypothesis of the relative age effect on the competitive success and performance may be not applied generally to all age groups and all types of sports.

Keywords

• children
• chronological age
• physical performance
• sport pedagogy
• tennis