Athlete Decision-Making Process in the Liminality After Career-Ending Injuries

This qualitative study explored the decision-making process of athletes in the liminal period immediately following career-ending injuries. While existing research has examined transition challenges and coping strategies, there remains a critical gap in understanding how athletes actively make decisions that shape their post-sport trajectories during this crucial period. Using Crisis Decision Theory (CDT) as a theoretical framework, this study investigated athletes' overall experience, support systems, injury severity assessment, and response option determination and evaluation during the immediate post-injury decision-making process. Key findings demonstrated that athletes' decision-making processes closely aligned with CDT's three-stage framework: assessing injury severity, determining response options, and evaluating choices. The research revealed how athletes exercise agency in their transition despite the abrupt loss of their athletic identity, community, and purpose. Athletes navigated decisions across multiple dimensions, including injury recovery, career transitions, financial planning, identity reconstruction, social relationships, and purpose-finding. The study's findings extend CDT's application to sport-specific contexts while providing new insights into how athletes process and respond to career-ending injuries. This research bridges sport psychology, decision theory, sport management, athlete transition, and crisis management fields, offering both theoretical understanding of non-normative athlete transitions and practical applications for developing targeted support interventions.