2023, Vol. 10, Issue 4, Part A

The study was conducted to assess the Sports Competition Anxiety of taekwondo players and to compare the level of sports competition anxiety of successful and unsuccessful taekwondo players. For the purpose of the study Sport Competition Anxiety Test (SCAT) developed by Martens et al, 1990 was administered on 150 taekwondo players (75 Male and 75 female) who had participated in the All India Inter University Taekwondo Championship-2022 (Amritsar). The administered questionnaire was quantified for obtaining the scores of sports competition anxiety as per the instructions/ guidelines. Mean, Standard Deviation and Independent Sample‘t’- test were used as a statistical procedure for analyzing the data. The drawn hypothesis was tested at 0.05 level of significance. Findings of the study revealed that the successful and unsuccessful taekwondo players were having an average level of sports competition anxiety before the competition as the mean score obtained was 17.78±1.85 and 22.56±2.67 respectively. When compared, it was seen that the successful taekwondo players were having significantly lower level of sports competitive anxiety as compared to unsuccessful taekwondo players as the calculated ‘t’ value obtained was 2.832 with p< 0.05. Therefore it was concluded that anxiety plays an important role in the performance of an athlete, a higher level of competition anxiety deteriorates athletes’ performance (Martens et al., 1990; Weinberg & Gould, 1999; Ortiz, 2006). And hence, it is recommended that the findings of the study must be used to design appropriate training programmes to help athletes acquire suitable coping strategies so as to reduce their anxiety levels and enhance their performance.