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Abstract
Recent NCAA DI conference realignment has created significant change to the geographic footprint of college athletics, with new large mega-conferences spanning multiple time zones, creating a connection of different regions of the country that have not historically been affiliated and creating a novel and impending dilemma of increased travel stress for NCAA DI student-athletes. The overall theme of this dissertation, separated into three studies, was to observe and report on travel-induced changes on items of recovery, sleep quality, and performance in a sample of NCAA DI Women’s Basketball athletes. Further, travel stress (TS) was observed along with sport specific training load (TL) to dually report on the independent and combined effects of each independent variable.
The results of this dissertation would suggest a significant, negative association between chronic travel stress and subjective happiness in addition to significant negative associations between TL and subjective soreness and fatigue reported in Study I. Results from Study II suggest a detrimental association between the occurrence of a time zone change for a game and study team performance, such that games in a different time zone were more likely to be lost than games in their local time zone regardless of opponent quality. Study II also reported a significant negative association between accumulated TL on the day prior to a game and team free throw percentage. However, no significant interactions between TS and TL were observed on any measures of in-game performance in Study II. Finally, Study III also demonstrated that games played in a different time zone were significantly more likely to be lost over five seasons, supporting the results provided in Study II across a larger sample of games.
The combined results from each study would suggest that TS, specifically the occurrence of a time zone change for competition, is negatively associated with specific measures of recovery and performance in this sample of NCAA DI Women’s Basketball athletes. In light of recent conference realignment, future research on the topic is warranted to better understand the effects of TS on measures of performance and recovery in NCAA student-athletes. INDEX WORDS: Travel Stress, Training Load, Recovery, Sleep Quality, Performance, Basketball, NCAA DI Conference Realignment
The results of this dissertation would suggest a significant, negative association between chronic travel stress and subjective happiness in addition to significant negative associations between TL and subjective soreness and fatigue reported in Study I. Results from Study II suggest a detrimental association between the occurrence of a time zone change for a game and study team performance, such that games in a different time zone were more likely to be lost than games in their local time zone regardless of opponent quality. Study II also reported a significant negative association between accumulated TL on the day prior to a game and team free throw percentage. However, no significant interactions between TS and TL were observed on any measures of in-game performance in Study II. Finally, Study III also demonstrated that games played in a different time zone were significantly more likely to be lost over five seasons, supporting the results provided in Study II across a larger sample of games.
The combined results from each study would suggest that TS, specifically the occurrence of a time zone change for competition, is negatively associated with specific measures of recovery and performance in this sample of NCAA DI Women’s Basketball athletes. In light of recent conference realignment, future research on the topic is warranted to better understand the effects of TS on measures of performance and recovery in NCAA student-athletes. INDEX WORDS: Travel Stress, Training Load, Recovery, Sleep Quality, Performance, Basketball, NCAA DI Conference Realignment