Dr. A.U Oriakhi

This study was carried out to investigate the influence of transformational leadership style has on student-athletes sports achievement in NUGA: University of Benin student-athletes as a case study. In order to carry out the study, three research questions were raised and one hypothesis formulated which was tested at 0.05 level of significance. The descriptive survey research design was used for this study. The population of the study comprised 638 undergraduate student athletes in the University of Benin who train daily at the various sporting facilities within the UNIBEN Ugbowo main campus. The data was collected using simple random technique and a sample size of 200 undergraduate student-athletes was derived. The research instrument used for the study was a self-structured questionnaire. The validity of the instrument was subjected to scrutiny and the Cronbach alpha method of reliability technique was used to ascertain its reliability. The correlation coefficient computed was 0.76 indicating that the instrument was reliable. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics such as frequency, percentages and means, while Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to test the hypothesis. From the Results, the current study indicates that student-athletes’ performances are influenced by the transformational leadership style of sports administrators to a high extent and significant differences were found to exist among male and female student-athletes as well as across the different age groups of student athletes as regards the influence of transformational leadership style of sports administrators on their sports performance. It was recommended among others therefore, that sports administrators practice transformational leadership style to achieve the best performance for student-athletes and it is necessary to create awareness among sports stakeholders in Nigeria about the importance of transformational leadership style of sports administrators in Universities.