Relação entre o potencial esportivo de jovens alunos atletas e coping.

The objective of the present study was to analyze the differences in coping psychological abilities among students-athletes of the Military College of Juiz de Fora in function of their sports potential evaluated by the coaches. We evaluated 395 student-athletes, of both sexes, in the age group between 11 and 18 years. The instrument used was the Athletic Coping Skills Inventory-28, in the Portuguese version (ACSI-28BR), for the evaluation of the sports potential, the coaches were questioned about the future expectation that deposits in each of the student-athletes, on a scale of 1 to 5, where the individuals who received scores 1, 2 and 3 were classified as low potential, and those who received scores 4 and 5 were classified as high potential. As a general result, it was found that high-potential student-athletes had higher scores on all the subscales of the questionnaire, that is, they deal better with stress. However, it is concluded that psychological skills can be a discriminating factor in determining sports performance.