2024, Vol. 11, Issue 4, Part B

The study sought to establish whether coaches, trainers and athletes in the three sampled high schools of Eswatini were aware of the existence of mental imagery as a sport psychological intervention and if they applied mental imagery during skills training and performance and thirdly, to find strategies of encouraging the adoption of mental imagery (MI) by high school coaches, trainers and athletes alike. It adopted a qualitative approach and a descriptive case study design, and was informed by the Bio-informational theory advanced by Lang in 1977. Questionnaires were distributed to the coaches manning soccer, netball and volleyball (N=9), who were purposively selected and two athletes in each of the three sporting codes per school (N=18). The study established that, high school teachers from the sampled three schools had no clue about mental imagery (MI) at all, and were not using mental imagery interventions during skills development and for performance enhancement. It also emerged from this study that the participant coaches had never attended a course or coaching clinic on the role of sport psychology in the modern movement culture, which was worrisome and concerning, in view of the fact that, this discipline is not new. It is envisaged that this study exposes the yawning disparities in the access to sport knowledge, coaching methodologies and especially the non-application of sport science in the local school system with the potential of stifling sport growth and development, which should concern the Ministry of Education and Training (MoET), under whose armpit school sport falls.