This study examined the structural relationships among youth sports coaches’ nonverbal interactions, athletes’ trust in coaches, game immersion, and exercise satisfaction. A total of 376 valid responses were collected from elementary, middle, and high school athletes as well as sports center participants in the Seoul metropolitan area between May and June 2025. Data were analyzed using SPSS 29.0 and AMOS 29.0, including reliability testing, confirmatory factor analysis, correlation analysis, and structural path modeling.
The results showed that intimacy, visual cues, and physical gestures significantly enhanced athletes’ trust in coaches, whereas encouragement was not statistically significant. In relation to game immersion, intimacy, encouragement, and physical gestures were significant predictors, while visual cues were not. Both trust in coaches and game immersion positively influenced exercise satisfaction, and intimacy, encouragement, and physical gestures had direct positive effects on satisfaction. However, visual cues again showed no significant impact.
Overall, these findings highlight that youth sports coaches’ nonverbal interactions—particularly intimacy, encouragement, and physical gestures—serve as key mechanisms in fostering athletes’ trust, promoting immersion, and enhancing exercise satisfaction. Practically, these results suggest the need to develop nonverbal communication training modules within coach education programs that emphasize emotional attunement, gesture-based instruction, and feedback authenticity. Such structured modules can strengthen coaches’ applied communication competencies and contribute to sustaining athletes’ long-term participation and positive sport experiences.