Abstract:

Sport provides a powerful learning environment where young people continuously develop competencies relevant to education, such as motivation, emotional regulation and cognitive efficiency. This study examines how these competencies appear among 304 young athletes from team and individual sports. A multidimensional assessment approach was used, combining psychological skills, personality characteristics and psychophysiological performance indicators collected under standardized conditions. The aim was to explore how sport participation is associated with psychological skills, self-regulation abilities and psychophysiological performance indicators such as decisiveness, stress tolerance and cognitive processing speed.

Results showed that athletes displayed high levels of motivation, self-confidence and task engagement, which are key components of self-regulated learning. Team-sport athletes demonstrated greater motivation, stronger collaboration tendencies, faster psychomotor responses and higher stress tolerance, suggesting that cooperative environments reinforce both social-emotional and cognitive competencies. Athletes in individual sports showed stronger autonomy and self-confidence, reflecting performance contexts that promote independent regulation. Differences also emerged across competitive levels. Higher-level athletes demonstrated greater decisiveness, aspiration and more efficient cognitive processing under pressure. Faster reaction speed, performance stability and higher stress tolerance were associated with stronger executive functioning, indicating advanced regulatory skills relevant for learning and academic performance. Conversely, athletes with lower stress tolerance and slower decision speed exhibited less-developed self-regulatory abilities, highlighting variability in learning-related competencies within youth sport.

Across the sample, the combination of emotional stability, motivation, reflective decision-making and rapid cognitive processing illustrates that sport serves as an accelerated environment for developing competencies central to education. The findings show that sport participation supports the acquisition of transferable skills such as emotional regulation, persistence, focus and adaptive decision making. These results highlight the value of sport as an informal learning setting that strengthens competencies essential for student development, academic engagement and long-term personal growth.

Keywords:

Youth sport, self-regulation, psychological skills, psychophysiological performance, competence development.