Abstract

Sport activity takes part in difficult training and competition conditions. This activity requires special stability of athlete mentality. Scientific investigations revealed that emotional states of athletes depend on various characteristics such as importance of competitions, strength of athlete, quality of competition organization and surroundings, behaviour of coach or other important persons (athletes, umpire), individual characteristics, level of mastering ways of psychological self-regulation. Therefore coaches and athletes must understand how important are emotions in order to strive for victory. The investigation seeks to reveal pre-competitional emotional states of table tennis player female and male playing in different leagues. Two scientific assumptions are raised: that female table tennis players experience negative emotional states of higher intensity before competitions than male table tennis players; pre-competitional emotional states of higher performance female table tennis players playing in Lithuanian team championship are evaluated more favourably than those of lower performance table tennis players playing in the first league. During investigation SAN test (Райгородский, 2000), was applied, with its help emotional states were evaluated according to three indications: well-being, activity and mood. According to applied method of Cronbach’o alfa such internal coordination indications were established: well-being – 0.64, activity – 0.71, mood – 0.69. 90 table tennis players took part in the investigation: at random 48 male table tennis players and 42 female table tennis players were selected. They were divided into two groups according to the championship they took part in. 51 table tennis players of higher performance i.e. 24 females and 27 males played in team championship and 39 table tennis players of lower performance – 15 female and 29 male played in the first league championship. χ² criteria was used to check the scientific hypotheses and to evaluate the reliability of difference of investigated groups. Pre-competitional emotional states indicators such as well-being and activity of male table tennis players statistically are evaluated more favourably (p<0.05) than those of female table tennis players, but according to mood evaluation of both groups statistically were not different (p<0.05). Pre-competitional emotional states of tables tennis players taking parts in different leagues were evaluated and statistic indicators showed that table tennis players who participate in Lithuanian team championship evaluate well-being and mood more favourably (p<0.05) than table tennis players playing in the first league. According to activity statistically reliable differences were not established (p<0.05). It means that table tennis players of both groups evaluate this component a similar in way.