The Effects of New Players on Team Cohesion

This study will explore how Virginia Tech softball players learn to work cohesively each year. This study aims to enable the athletes to reflect on their team’s and personal ability to work cohesively each year. As well as gaining an understanding of how they can improve their learning processes to work together as new members join, some remain, and others leave annually. Using Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development, this study’s framework aims to help understand the evolution of a team and the stages of team development. The stages of the Tuckman model are forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning. Participants for this study contained 10 Virginia Tech softball student-athletes who participated in the program between 2018-2023. Each participant contributing to the semi-structured interviews was asked pre-selected questions and was reviewed as one team. After each interview, transcripts were reviewed and analyzed for themes. After the analysis of all interviews was examined, three themes emerged. These themes were: Meeting high standards with an evolving culture and leadership, developing relationships effects on and off the field performance, and facing challenges with roles and adversity. The Tuckman model and the research question served as a guide to understanding better how the team learns to work cohesively each year and what they can learn from that knowledge. This study can be used for other sports teams and other researchers interested in the effects of new teammates and a changing dynamic each year on a team’s ability to work cohesively. Therefore, further research can be done to understand how facing individual and team shortcomings affect team cohesion.