Impacts of (non)workplace relations on the health and wellbeing of sports workers: an investigation of community sports coaches

This study makes a novel contribution to the social analysis of sports coaches through its exploration of those mechanisms that explain how, during their enactment of policy, community sports coaches’ working and nonworking social relations impacted their health and wellbeing. Analysis of data generated from in person and online interviews with 40 community sports coaches revealed the nature and quality of coaches’ working and nonworking social relations, the level and type of social support provided by these relations, and how policy work, which includes navigating social relations with various stakeholders, influences coaches’ health and wellbeing. Drawing on Thoits’ (1989, 2011, 2021) interactionist work, we examine how coaches’ working and non-working social relations facilitated and hindered the enactment of policy as well as positively and negatively impacted their health and wellbeing. This study not only advances our sociological understanding of sports work, but raises important questions for the health and wellbeing of the community sports coaching workforce.