Talent identification and development systems (TIDS) are commonly used in professional sport to convert youth athletes into sporting stars of the future. Acknowledging that only a few athletes can “make it,” the necessity and healthiness of TIDS have recently been questioned based on their increased professionalism, high training, and competition volumes, but limited effectiveness. In this short communication, we suggest that the key issues associated with TIDS are not due to their overall concept, but with how they are designed and implemented. It is recommended that researchers and practitioners determine the worth and value of TIDS by also evaluating the positive health of the athlete rather than solely focusing on performance outcomes. To achieve this, TIDS staff should shape and develop their values, expectations, and day-to-day routines to achieve positive health outcomes focusing on personal development and an athlete-centered culture. In business, this has been termed the concept of “Deliberately Developmental Organisation.” TIDS can deploy the factors (e.g., high-quality staff, expert support services, quality facilities, and learning routines) characteristic of such organizations, to concurrently ensure positive impacts and minimize predictable negative outcomes without losing focus on a drive for sporting performance.

Understanding the force-deflection behavior of the sternum is an important element in designing devices for implants for chest wall deformity repair. Human growth and variability makes a single measure of the stiffness difficult to determine. This work takes empirical data from the literature to develop aggregate sternal force-deflection models. Statistical methods were used to determine possible groupings based on patient age and the effect of gender. It was found that three age groups could be used, representing childhood (4-10 years), adolescence (11-19 years), and adulthood (26-53 years). Gender was found to have a statistical p-value of 0.068, 0.0611, and 0.012, respectively, in the proposed age groups. Jittering of the data was used to account for human variability and assumptions made in data comparisons. The jittered results followed that of the initial data set. Childhood force-deflection behavior follows a relatively constant stiffness, adolescence experiences a growth period of increasing stiffness, and adulthood stiffnesses again begin to stabilize around a relatively constant value.

Despite literature highlighting numerous risks to the healthy psychosocial development of youth elite academy soccer players, little of this research is based on high-quality research designs. This study employed a prospective longitudinal cohort design to track psychosocial outcomes of academy involvement within male youth elite soccer players (n = 33, U12-U16 age groups) compared to age-matched soccer-active school pupils (n = 44) over 12 months. Participants completed questionnaires assessing the most commonly raised psychosocial concerns at four equally spaced data collection periods (T1–T4). Repeated measures multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVAs) indicated that, over the year, both groups reported a healthy and improving stress and recovery balance, as well as positive and stable needs satisfaction and physical, psychological and social well-being. Academy players reported stable positive school-related quality of life, whereas school pupils reported increases from T3 to T4. Academy players reported consistent significantly higher total athletic identity and exclusivity of identity. Findings suggest that many concerns around negative psychosocial impacts of soccer academy involvement did not materialise in this context. However, heightened athletic identities remained a concern.

Maturation is the process by which we change and develop throughout life. As children grow older, they do not only mature physically and physiologically but also psycho-socially. Over time their abilities to remember, retrieve and process information as well as to reason and problem solve develop. These changes in cognitive development go hand in hand with being able to recognise their own abilities and attributes, shaping an increasingly complex sense of self. Furthermore, children grow to recognise, and understand their own and others’ emotions and perspectives, allowing for increasing cooperation but also introducing challenges in terms of social interaction. Over time children face the challenge of establishing independence, a coherent identity and a sense of direction for the future. Knowing how children typically develop in these areas will allow coaches to better plan developmentally appropriate sessions, understand their participants’ changing behaviour, as well as cater for the various developmental challenges children face as they mature.