An athlete will one day experience retirement from their respective sport. Athletic identity can play a role in how the athlete may cope with this transition to life without athletics. Thus, the purpose of this study was to explore the underlying factors of athletic identity development in a team of Division II Women's Basketball players, and to understand their experiences of a positive psychology intervention focused on developing positive self-identity. This study utilized both qualitative and quantitative measures to gain insight on the topic of athletic identity. Questionnaires, interviews and interventions were conducted over a period of five weeks. Seven NCAA Division II women·s basketball players at a small rural university participated in the study. Through the interviews focused on discovering underlying factors of athletic identity, six emergent themes arose: psychological need to be viewed as an athlete, self-defined athlete, highly invested in sport throughout life, family influence, lack of purpose outside of sport and lack of balance outside of sport. Post-interviews were conducted, focused on discovering the athlete's perceptions of a positive psychology intervention and five emergent themes were discovered: lack of understanding of strengths without sport, intention to stay involved in sport, sport has influenced career choices, self-defined athletes and intervention beneficial and enjoyable. These results suggest that overall, the underlying factors to athletic identity were based on a lack of the athletes finding purpose outside of sport, influence from family and society, as well as a need to be viewed and seen as an athlete. Results also suggested a positive psychology intervention can be beneficial to athletes in allowing them to reflect and gain a better understanding of their life outside of sport.
