Discobolul Vol.1//2025

Anxiety is the most common and universal human emotion. It is a reaction of tension without an apparent cause, but more diffuse and less focused than fear. Anxiety, as a normal emotional sensation or state in certain circumstances, is a typical response to various stressful everyday situations. The problem arises when anxiety occurs continuously over time in situations that are not really threatening or when it is very intense. The present research aims to identify the role of recreational sports activities in combating anxiety among eighth graders. The study focuses on this category of students for two reasons: on the one hand, the demands placed on them throughout the school year because of the evaluation exam, which is particularly important for their school and even professional careers, and on the other hand, because most studies highlight the benefits of sports participation for adolescents in general, while our approach is aimed at 14-15 year olds who are preparing for an essential stage in their lives. The research involved a group of eighth graders from a mainstream school in Bucharest. The main tool used was the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale. It was completed by adolescent before and after application of the intervention programme lessons. The initial anxiety score (62.75 points) suggested a risk for anxiety disorder. After completion of the sports activity programme, the overall level of anxiety was within normal limits. This study has demonstrated that recreational sports activities have beneficial effects on anxiety disorders.

Sports Social Media (SM) has become an essential platform for clubs, leagues, and sponsors aiming to promote sustainable practices and engage fans in an emotionally meaningful way. This study explores the predictive power of Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) in boosting SM communication by recognizing and interpreting emotional cues in images and video streams captured in sports contexts – live broadcasts, fan‑cams, and supporter‑generated content. CNNs contribute to tasks such as crowd sentiment analysis, content moderation, deepfake detection, and real‑time emotional feedback – all critical for ethical, emotionally intelligent sports marketing. This research presents a neural network model designed to quantify the impact of CNN-based emotion recognition on four key aspects of social media engagement: audience understanding, emotional content triggers, storytelling effectiveness, and responsiveness to social trends. Using a multilayer perceptron architecture trained on facial and webcam data, the model evaluates the relationship between CNN features and sustainability-focused communication outcomes. Findings indicate that CNN training iterations, facial image variability, and real-time webcam data are the most influential predictors of effective sports social media (SM), while emotional labeling and training data diversity play moderate roles. The model demonstrates practical utility for neuromarketingdriven campaign personalization and provides a foundation for ethical, data-informed sustainability messaging. Despite challenges related to privacy and bias, CNN-based AI systems hold significant potential to transform digital marketing strategies into adaptive, responsive, and emotionally intelligent frameworks.

This study aims to provide a preliminary examination of the reliability and factorial structure of the Satisfaction Scale for Athletes (SSA) in international football contexts. The SSA, originally validated within the Turkish football league, measures athletes’ satisfaction with key dimensions of the sporting environment, including satisfaction with the coach, team performance, and teammates. The present research focuses on two main objectives: (1) evaluating the internal consistency of the SSA subscales, and (2) exploring its structural organization using Principal Component Analysis (PCA) as an exploratory procedure. The sample consisted of 63 professional and semi-professional male athletes from various international football leagues. Sampling adequacy was supported by a satisfactory Kaiser–Meyer–Olkin index and a significant Bartlett’s test of sphericity. Results indicate satisfactory internal consistency across subscales and provide preliminary support for a three-component structure explaining a substantial proportion of total variance, broadly consistent with the original model. However, given the exploratory design, modest sample size, and absence of confirmatory factor analysis, findings should be interpreted cautiously and considered as an initial step in the international examination of the instrument rather than definitive evidence of cross-cultural equivalence. Overall, the study suggests the potential applicability of the SSA in international football contexts and highlights the need for further research employing larger, more balanced samples and confirmatory factor analysis to strengthen its structural validation and test measurement invariance across cultural groups.

Volleyball is a high-intensity sport characterized by repeated jumps, sudden changes of direction, and rapid transitions between offensive and defensive phases. In such a dynamic context, reaction time becomes a decisive factor of performance, directly influencing the efficiency of technical and tactical actions and the players’ ability to adapt to the unpredictability of the game. The purpose of this study was to analyze changes in reaction time in U15 volleyball players following the implementation of a specific physical training program based on the principles of microperiodization. The sample consisted of 22 athletes, evaluated in two distinct stages: initial testing (February 2025) and final testing (September 2025). Between the two assessments, the participants followed a structured training program focused on developing speed ability and reaction time. Reaction time was measured using the Witty system under standardized conditions, with each athlete being evaluated individually. Statistical analysis revealed significant differences between the two testing sessions, confirming the effectiveness of the implemented training program. The results show that a microperiodized training program, applied in the medium term, can generate measurable motor adaptations, contributing to the optimization of reaction speed in juvenile volleyball players. These findings support the importance of integrating specific exercises aimed at developing reaction time into the training methodology and provide a basis for developing training models adapted to age and performance level.