Abstract:
The purpose of this study is to explore the practice and challenges of athlete motivation of middle distance runners of selected Oromia athletics clubs. The athletics clubs were selected using simple random sampling while study participants were selected from each club using census. For qualitative part convenience sampling was used. Questionnaire and interview were used as a tool for data collection. To analyze the collected data both Descriptive and binary logistic regression analysis was applied while qualitative finding were narrated. The finding showed that intrinsic motivation reference, intrinsic motivation affect the middle distance runner its p-value less than 0.05 that is p=0.007. This indicated that statically significant similarly, experience stimulation intrinsic motivation p=0.044. The performance of middle distance runners were affected by experience stimulation intrinsic motivation due correlated with their performance. The extrinsic motivation, the independent variable Identified extrinsic motivation and Introjected motivation p=0.001, p=0.016 respectively this showed that statistically significant, which affected the middle distance runners performance. On the contrary, amotivation was not significant because p=0.079 that is greater than the value of p=0.05. Based on the data was gathered from qualitative it was matched with the quantitative data. The respondents responded that lack of facilities; finance and standardized running track, professional sport psychologists and managers who overloaded the athletes’ training were more likely affected the middle distance runner’s performance. Therefore, based on the research finding the researcher forwarded possible recommendations.
