EXPLORATION OF ELITE COACHES IN MALAYSIAN SPORTS SCHOOLS IN STUDENT ATHLETE DEVELOPMENT: EVOLVED GROUNDED THEORY APPROACH

The Malaysian Sports School (MSS) was founded to unite promising student-athletes from various regions of the country, aiming to cultivate and enhance their athletic abilities with aspirations of reaching the international stage. The Ministry of Education Malaysia (KPM) selects coaches with expertise in sports to offer structured guidance and training to chosen MSS student-athletes in order to achieve this goal. To guarantee that the performance of MSS student-athletes stays at its best, the dedication and efforts of KPM and MSS coaches in athlete development are consistently prioritized. Additionally, the enhancement of their professionalism and competence as high-performance coaches is highly demanded by KPM. Therefore, this study aims to explore the aspects and needs of elite MSS coaches in developing student-athletes to reach the highest levels in their respective sports. A qualitative method was used in this study through the Evolved Grounded Theory approach by Strauss and Corbin (1990, 1998, 2008) and The Coaching Model (Côté et al., 1995). The study involves ten selected elite coaches from five MSS. Data was collected through in-depth, semi-structured interviews with open-ended questions, observations, and document analysis. The study identifies two main themes discussing the aspects and needs of coaches in developing student-athletes at MSS, namely knowledge and management. The final findings of this study aim to offer valuable insights to the ministry, school administrators, and coaches, enhancing the development of coaches and student-athletes at MSS and enriching the existing literature in the domain of sports coaching.