Coaching for ‘fitting in’: coaches, soccer, and education in professional sports clubs in low-ses towns

This study examines how high school soccer coaches who coach youth in the framework of professional sports clubs in low-socioeconomic-class (SES) towns in Israel define their roles. The findings revealed five primary themes reflecting the coaches’ descriptions and accounts: a description of the youth athletes’ life spaces, the coaches’ perceptions of their own roles, the core values to which the coaches subscribe, the relationships between the coaches and the youth athletes’ parents, and a description of the youth athletes’ future orientation. These findings contribute to a discussion of the linkage between education, sport and SES or the implications of SES in informal education spaces.