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The paper presents the Swedish data on university student-athletes' dual career (DC) competences and coping, from the European project "Gold in Education and Elite Sport" (GEES). A cross-sectional quantitative design was implemented with the objectives to explore: (a) the student-athletes' perceived need to develop DC competences in order to successfully combine sport and study, (b) if the student-athletes experienced and how they coped with specific DC scenarios, and (c) the magnitude of the association between the student-athletes' possession of prioritised DC competences for each scenario and their scenario-specific coping. Seventy-one university student-athletes with a mean age of 25.21 completed the DC competency questionnaires developed within GEES. The student-athletes reported their perception of importance and possession of 38 DC competences (e.g. cope with stress, prioritising), as well as coping with seven DC scenarios (e.g. miss significant days of study), and selected the five most important competences (from the list of 38) to cope with each scenario. The results revealed that the student-athletes: (a) perceived a need to develop more than 70% of the DC competences to successfully combine sport and studies, (b) had experienced and coped average-to-good with the DC scenarios, and (c) possession of the top five prioritised competences was moderately-to-strongly related to their coping in three scenarios. The study extends understanding of Swedish university student-athletes' DC competences and has contributed to the development of Swedish National Guidelines for elite athletes' dual careers (2018).

This case study of a dual career development environment (DCDE) was informed by the holistic ecological approach (HEA) and aimed at (a) providing a holistic description of a DCDE at university level in Sweden and (b) investigating the perceived factors influencing the environment’s effectiveness in facilitating the development of student-athletes. The authors blended in situ observations, interviews, and document analysis to explore the case, and HEA-informed working models were transformed into empirical models summarizing the case. Findings show a well-coordinated DCDE with the key role of coaches in daily dual career support and how efforts were integrated through a dual career-support team sharing a philosophy of facilitating healthy performance development and life balance, with a whole-person and empowerment approach. This study adds to the literature by identifying features of a successful DCDE, and insights from the case can be useful for practitioners in their quest to optimize their DCDEs and support.

The aim of this study was to explore athlete-coach relationships from an athletic career perspective with the objectives: (a) to create individual career profiles of athlete-coach relationships, (b) to illustrate the career profiles describing athletes' subjective experiences of working with all the coaches involved in their careers, and (c) to summarize athletes' views on the dynamics of athlete-coach relationships in the course of their careers. Two case studies using narrative interviews with one team and one individual sport athlete (both Swedish) were made. The Narrative Oriented Inquiry model was used to guide the data collection, treatment, and interpretation. The results representing over 20 relationships in total are presented as individual career profiles of athlete-coach relationships followed by interpretive narratives exploring more in detail the different athlete-coach relationships throughout their careers. Poems summarizing the athletes' perceived dynamics of their relationships with coaches are then presented using only the athletes own words.