Forming students'' competitive competences via billiards tournaments
The article presents a billiards tournament design model geared to engage university students of all the health groups in a systemic sporting activity. Main competitive competences of the student players in the billiards tournaments are identified and considered in detail by the study. Subject to the study was a Study Group of 340 students of 18-23 years of age. The study analyzed the competitive reports of the university billiards competitions in the “free pyramid” discipline. The competitions were designed to attain a variety of educational, developmental and culturing objectives in the process. The study found that the billiards competitions is an efficient tool to help develop a set of professionally valuable general-culture competences in students diagnosed with health disorders and disabilities based on a practical competitive experience, the acquired competences being highly important for their future careers in the national economy. The educational function of the competitive process implies that it forms a few competences including the knowledge of regulations of the competitions; basic rules of the billiards game and rules of billiards competitions in its specific disciplines; tournament progress/ elimination schedules; statutes of competitions; rules of the competitive draws; game result reporting rules; and the final competitive report performing rules. The developmental function of the game implies the students developing a few important competences including the self-control competence with due mental and functional self-management components; competitive process control and players’ interaction control competences; and knowledge of the refereeing, servicing and supervising rules of the tournaments. And the educative function of the game implies the valuable individual mental qualities being formed in the students with the relevant corporate/ teamwork culture including the due communication skills; due teamwork skills for the benefit of the students’ sport activity at the university; and positive attitudes to the sport culture and accomplishments.