ArticleFrontiers in sports and active living2025
Selection biases in elite youth handball: early maturation compensates for younger relative age.
Article in Frontiers in sports and active living, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
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Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Relative Age and Maturity Timing in Youth Team Sports: Associations with Body Size and Vertical Jump Performance.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- The Role of Training Age and Sport Specialization in Achieved Selection Tier in Adolescent Handball Talents.Sports medicine - open · 2026Article
- Anthropometric and Physical Performance Reference Values in Young Handball Players Aged 9-15 Years: A Cross-Sectional Study Using Percentile Profiling and Factorial ANOVA.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2026Article
- Analysis of Motor and Perceptual-Cognitive Performance in Young Soccer Players: Insights into Training Experience and Biological Maturation.Sports (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Article
- Beyond chronological age: maturity offset is positively associated with performance in throwing-related tests in youth track and field throwing athletes.Frontiers in sports and active living · 2026Article
- An exploratory study to investigate the effects of motor performance and maturation on talent selection in handball.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
Talent selections in youth sports are frequently biased regarding the maturation and relative age of the players, with preference given to more mature and relatively older players. It thus can be hypothesized that relatively younger players born at the end of the selection year must mature earlier to compensate for this disadvantage. Hence, this study investigated maturation, relative age, and their association in the talent selection of German youth handball players. A secondary data analysis within an ex post facto design was conducted to examine the birth quarter distributions and maturation parameters of 2,259 female U15 players and 2,340 male U16 players. Practically significant maturation bias was detected in male players, who matured almost one year earlier than common German boys (
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