Fair play: the perception of the young handball players on the parent´s behavior

In recent years, the deviant and negative behaviours of parents during follow-up in their children's sports practice have reached alarming proportions in various sports. This increase may be associated with greater participation of parents, both in the presence in games and in training. With this study, we intend to assess the perception of the athletes about the behaviour of the parents in the sports context, namely in relation to fair play. The sample consisted of young handball players from the Madeira Handball Association, aged 9- 16 years of both genders (n = 284, male n = 122, female n = 162) registered by ten clubs and with a minimum of one year of organized sports practice. For the data collection, a questionnaire previously constructed and duly validated was used. In this study were used descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation), chi square and Spearman correlations. The statistical program used was SPSS v.25.0 and the level of significance was 5%.The results confirm that the athletes consider positive the presence of their parents, however, the results point to a perception of inadequate behaviours of the parents regarding the referees, mainly by the boys. It was found that the younger the athletes are the greater is the perception of the enthusiastic support of the parents, the greater the volume of instructions to the field, and the perception of a greater emotional discontent of the parents in relation to the problems and incidents of the game and training.