(Re)defining youth sport participation

Youth sport participation, retention, and dropout are well-established areas of academic interest in the interdisciplinary field of sport. However, terminology, definitions, and conceptualisations of participation vary significantly within the literature. This variation can potentially lead to inadvertent misreporting or deliberate manipulation of membership and/or participation data by clubs and sporting organisations, particularly when applying for highly prized, competitive grant funding opportunities. This paper advances sport participation terminology by reconceptualising youth sport behaviours that can be situated within the phases of enrolment and entry, retention, sustained engagement, sport transfer, dropout, sustained disengagement, and critically, re-engagement. The purpose of this critical commentary is to highlight the potential benefits of purposefully redefining phases of ‘sport participation’ and propose the Participation Re-Engagement (PRE) model–a new conceptualisation of sport participation for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to enhance policies, programmes, and interventions aimed at increasing organised youth sport participation.