Tracking wellbeing, confidence and sleep in young female athletes participating in The Female Co: A six-month longitudinal study

Introduction: Young female athletes face a range of challenges both on and off the field, including performance pressure, body image concerns, and disrupted sleep – all of which can impact confidence, self-esteem, and long-term engagement in sport. The Female Co, founded by Libby Cook-Black, is an initiative aimed at empowering young women through sport by fostering a supportive, development-focused environment. Despite increasing awareness of the need to support female athletes holistically, few studies have longitudinally examined the psychological and physiological wellbeing of this group in community-driven programs.

This study aims to explore changes in sport confidence, self-esteem, psychological empowerment, and sleep quality in young female athletes engaged in The Female Co High Performance Program (HPP) across a six-month period. A secondary aim is to investigate the relationship between subjective wellbeing measures and objective sleep patterns captured via actigraphy.

Methods: Participants are young female athletes aged 14 – 18 years enrolled in The Female Co HPP (2 rugby league, 3 soccer, 1 AFL, 1 netball, 1 triathlete). Data will be collected at three timepoints: Baseline (T1 - April), 3 months (T2 - July) and 6 months (T3 - September).

The following validated instruments are being used:

Sources of Sport Self - Confidence Questionnaire (SSCQ) – assesses various factors contributing to athletes confidence.

Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES)- to assess global self-worth

Growth and Empowerment Measure (GEM) is a too used to assess psychological, social, and emotional empowerment and personal growth. It consists of an Emotional Empowerment Scale (ESS) of 14 questions (total marks of 70) that ask the participant to rate how they feel about themselves on a Likert scale of 1 – 5 (1 being low and 5 being high). The second section involves 12 Empowerment Scenarios (EP) whereby the athlete thinks about their everyday life and rates on a Likert scale of 1 – 7 (total mark of 84).

Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) is a self-report measure of sleep quality, consisting of 19 items grouped into seven component scores, which are equally weighted. The seven subscale component scores provide ratings of: i) subjective sleep quality, (ii) sleep latency, (iii) total sleep time, (iv) sleep efficiency, (v) sleep disturbances, (vi) use of sleep medication, and (vii) daytime dysfunction. Global scores > 5 are generally used to indicate poor sleep quality.

In addition, athletes wore actigraphs for 21 consecutive nights at each time point to objectively monitor sleep duration, latency, and efficiency.
Results: Data collection has occurred at baseline and the SSCQ found Social Support (6.53), Environmental Comfort (6.30), Mastery (6.06) and Coaches Leadership (6.06) to be the key sources of confidence across the athletes. Interestingly Physical Self – Presentation came 7 out of 9, but three athletes ranked this as a key source of confidence, while the remaining athletes ranked this as low.
Global PSQI indicated 2 out of 7 of our female athletes identified as poor sleepers (range 4 – 7). Time to bed mean 21.30hrs (range 20.30 – 22.15hrs), time get up mean 06.15hrs (range 05.15 – 07.30), total sleep mean 8 hrs 40min (range 7.5 – 10hrs), sleep latency mean 20mins (range 5 – 37mins), and sleep quality 100% fairly good.

The MEQ-SA indicated 6 athletes as moderately morning type and 1 athlete as neither type.

The GEM scores for the ESS mean 56 out of 70 (range 48 – 65), and EP mean was 57.57 out of 84 (range 40 – 67).

Discussion: Baseline findings showed that social support, environmental comfort, mastery, and coach leadership were key sources of confidence for the athletes, with individual differences noted around physical self-presentation. Sleep quality was generally good, though two athletes identified as poor sleepers. Early GEM scores indicated moderate to high emotional empowerment and personal growth. These initial results suggest that participation in a supportive, female-focused program may positively influence psychological wellbeing and sleep quality over time.
Impact/Application to the field: This study provides crucial longitudinal evidence on the holistic wellbeing of female athletes engaged in a purpose-driven, female-led high-performance sports program. By tracking confidence, self-esteem, empowerment, and sleep quality over six months, it highlights the interconnectedness of psychological and physiological health in athlete development. The findings have significant applications in sport and exercise science, offering a model for integrating mental health and sleep monitoring into youth athlete programs. This research underscores the need for tailored, supportive environments to enhance not just performance, but also long-term engagement, resilience, and wellbeing in female athletes.

Declaration: My co-authors and I acknowledge that we have no conflict of interest of relevance to the submission of this abstract.