Stress and burnout among collegiate tennis coaches

The purpose of this investigation was to examine stress and burnout among c ollegiate tennis coaches. Three alternative models of stress-mediated relat ionships between personal/situational variables (hardiness, coaching issues , competitive level, gender, trait anxiety, initiating and consideration le adership styles) and burnout among men (n = 163) and women (n = 98) collegi ate head tennis coaches were examined. Preliminary analysis revealed that t he tennis coaches in this investigation were suffering from levels of burno ut similar to those of other helping professionals working in higher educat ion (Maslach & Jackson, 1986). A gender-by-competition-level (2 X 2) MANOVA on study variables revealed a significant main effect for gender but not f or competition level. The women had a higher tendency than the men did to f ind coaching issues stressful. Structural equation modeling revealed that t he stress-mediation model, also featuring direct effects of personality/dis positional variables on burnout, accounted for observed relationships in da ta more adequately than the other alternative models did.