Relation of motor and psychological status of wheel chair tennis players with their sportive performance

This study aims to determine the motor and physiological status of the disabled tennis players playing on the Wheelchair and to research its relation with the sportive performances. The research group of study was composed of the sportsmen playing in Wheelchair Tennis National Team of Turkey. Total 12 sportsmen, 7 male and 5 female having the ages of =29,66±5,82 year participated in the study voluntarily. To measure anxiety level of the participants, Spielberger (1973) Anxiety (S.T.A.I) inventory was used, and to measure self-esteem, Rosenberg (1965) self-esteem scale was used; further, to measure their motivation level, Willis (1982) sport-specific achievement and motivation scale was used. In order to assess the status of motor features of the sportsmen, a fitness test for wheel chair tennis players which has been developed by Guentzel (2003) was used. To measure tennis performance levels of the sportsmen, ITN test was used. For analyzing match performances of the sportsmen, 7 female and 11 male matches played in Wheelchair Tennis Championship of Turkey were recorded by camera. The results obtained at the end of the study were evaluated in SPSS 13.0 packaged software. In the statistical analysis of data, the descriptive statistic methods were used while Mann Whitney-U test was used for identifying inter-group differences and Spearman correlation test was used for inter-factor relations. The error margin was assumed as to be 0,05 in this study.Consequently, a significant difference was found in the points of motive of power and strength tests only according to the genders of the national players playing Wheel chair tennis (p<0,05). A significant relation was found between drives of trait anxiety and avoidance of failure (p<0,05). Also a significant relation was found among match performances, self-respect, ITN, rapidity, speed, endurance test and weekly training programs (p<0,05). According to the results of this study, it can be said that the psychological features are also as important as the motor features in determination and development of performance levels of the sportsmen. It is considered that involving trainings providing psychological development along with trainings providing motor development to train high level sportsmen shall make positive contribution to the performance developments of the sportsmen.Key Words: Wheelcair tennis, anxiety, motivation, performance