Review of sports performance research with youth, collegiate, and elite athletes.

Leung et al. (2011) looked for every behavior-analytic sports study from 1990 to 2011.

They found only 25. Most used single-case designs with youth, college, or elite athletes.

The team mapped what was tested and listed gaps for future work.

The field was tiny—about one study per year.

Skills like golf putts or free throws were targeted, but whole-team tactics were rare.

The authors called for more single-case work before big group trials.

Schenk et al. (2019) later built a fuller map. Their 2019 scoping review found 101 studies and a 23-technique toolkit, so it now supersedes the 2011 count.

Matson et al. (2004) had already spotted 40 single-subject sport papers by 2004, showing the trend was alive but still small.

DePaolo et al. (2019) and Clarke (1998) give real examples the 2011 review missed: a women’s lacrosse team taught with prompts and a teen whose tennis tantrums stopped with habit-reversal plus response cost.

If you work with athletes, you now know the evidence base is thin but growing fast. Grab the 2019 toolkit from Schenk et al. to pick proven techniques, then run quick A-B-A-B tests with your own players. There is still plenty of room to be the first BCBA to publish on your sport.