Awareness And Implementation Of Sports Science And Medicine Component Of National Sports Policy: A Mirage Or Reality?

Abstract

Modern day sport is now a multi-billion dollar industry which is capable of providing huge return on investment to investors and creating economic prosperity for athletes and other stakeholders. Based on the significance of sports science and medicine on sports performance, several nations, organizations and establishments have formulated policies to guide sports development, Nigeria inclusive. However, the level of awareness and implementation has been established. Therefore, this study assessed awareness and implementation of 2009 National Sports Policy among coaches and team officials in National Youth Games (NYG). This study is a descriptive correlational survey; the population comprised all the 348 coaches and officials in of the 6^th National Youth Games. A sample size of 264 respondents was randomly selected. The instrument for data collection was a semi-structured Questionnaire which was validated by experts in the related fields and found reliable at 0.73r. Four null hypotheses were formulated and tested with inferential statistic of Chi-square test of association. Significance level was set at 0.05 alpha. All the hypotheses were not retained because there was statistically significant relationship for all the variables; for hypothesis one (HO1); X²(6, N=264) = 74.83, p=.00, for HO2; X²(2, 264)

=24.13, p =.00 among others. It was concluded that; awareness and implementation of the

sports science and medicine component of the policy was very poor among other conclusions. The study recommended among other that; experts in sports science and medicine such as exercise physiologists, sports nutritionists, sports psychologists, physical rehabilitation therapists and clinical sports medicine practitioners should be recruited and attached to sport teams.