Supporting ice hockey coaches to promote youth players’ need satisfaction and enjoyment: A digital booster–supplemented intervention

Few intervention studies have combined in-person and digital components to facilitate coaches’ supportive interpersonal behaviors and promote positive youth outcomes. Grounded in self-determination theory (SDT), we examined whether a workshop, with or without smartphone-delivered boosters using a just-in-time adaptive intervention (JITAI) logic, improved players’ perceptions of need-supportive coaching, basic psychological need satisfaction, and enjoyment. Participants were 393 youth ice hockey players aged 12 to 16 years from 13 clubs whose coaches were allocated to a workshop-only (partial implementation), workshop plus digital boosters (full implementation), or control condition. Outcomes were assessed over 10 weeks and analyzed using multigroup multilevel growth models. Condition × time interactions showed that relatedness support was higher in both intervention arms compared with the control group. Only the partial-implementation group showed gains in autonomy support and autonomy satisfaction. No effects were observed for competence support, competence satisfaction, or enjoyment, and no significant differences emerged between the partial- and full-implementation groups. The findings highlight the potency of brief SDT-based youth coach interventions while underscoring the need for longer evaluation periods to determine whether JITAI digital boosters may help sustain or amplify intervention effects.