Achievement Motivation and Adjustment Patterns Among International and National Players of Different Team Sports (Report‪)‬

INTRODUCTION Sports teams constitute a unique kind of group. Unlike some other collection of people to solve problems, teams have clear-cut goals and well defined roles for both coaches and players to adhere to. These teams participate in institutionalized competitive activities that involve rigorous physical exertion or the use of relatively complex physical skills by participants motivated by internal or external rewards. How motivated the players are, depends on the direction of their efforts i.e. what they seek out, what approach they adopt and what attracts them in a certain situation. When these efforts are exerted in right intensity, optimum output in performance is achieved (Weinberg and Gould, 2011). If two players have similar abilities, the deciding factor to indicate their achievement at higher levels may be the presence of a combination of desirable personality traits attuned with their desire to achieve. This desire or the motivation has attracted the attention of researchers for the last many decades. Motivation is at the heart of many of sport's most interesting problems, both as a developmental outcome of social environments such as competition and coaches' behaviors and as a developmental influence on behavioral variables such as persistence, perceptions of an ego-involving climate, learning, performance and achievement goals (Ormrod, 2011). To work best in any motivational state, it is important to know what motivates an athlete towards a particular achievement goal; the trait centered orientation, situation centered orientation or interactional orientation? (Weinberg and Gould, 2011). Thus, exploring the phenomena of motivation, its main elements may include: Motivation towards winning, motivation for individual excellence, motivation toward team goals and motivation towards achievement goals.