Abstract

Sport has been established as one of the most popular domains in Israel, particularly among the youth population. Youth sport in Israel is considered to be one of the few areas in which Jews and Arabs are able to get to know each other, to co-operate, and to interact. In this article, the authors describe the consultation approach of one sport psychology consultant (SPC) in fostering relationships among adolescent basketball players – Jewish and Arab – coming from different cultures. More specifically, the purposes of this article are: to describe the phases of sport development for youth basketball players in Israel in both the Jewish and Arab populations; to describe the basic consultation principles of the sport psychology programme used by a SPC when working with young and adult elite athletes in Israel; to demonstrate the use of the sport psychology programme when working with a male basketball team composed of adolescent players from different cultures (Jewish and Arab); to outline a number of lessons learned from working with adolescent basketball players from different cultures; and to provide a number of practical recommendations for SPCs who work with ballgame players from different cultures. Aus dem Text (geändert)