This study aimed to investigate whether there are associations between sports participation and alcohol drinking (e.g., HD and HD-initiation) in younger adolescents from B&H. Results revealed several important findings. First, there was a high prevalence of HD in young adolescents. Second, results evidenced a higher occurrence of HD at the start of high school among those adolescents who quit sports, but a lower occurrence of HD at the start of high school was evidenced for adolescents being involved in sports. Third, sports factors obtained at the study baseline were not correlated to HD initiation over the study course. Therefore, we cannot accept our initial study hypothesis.
4.1. Prevalence of Alcohol Consumption in Early Adolescence
The first important finding of this research is that alcohol consumption significantly increases from the beginning of high school to the end of the second grade (i.e., from 14 to 16 years of age). Moreover, HD also increases significantly, from 6% at baseline, to almost 20% of adolescents aged 16 years who reported HD. Therefore, the idea of previous studies that alcohol drinking begins at a very early age (i.e., during early adolescence) was confirmed [
19].
Studies conducted on the territory of B&H and border countries reported a high prevalence of HD in adolescents aged 16–19 years. Among adolescents from B&H aged 17–18, 41% of boys and 19% of girls were considered harmful alcohol drinkers [
8]. Similarly, 22% and 29% of Croatian adolescents aged 16 and 18 were reported as harmful alcohol drinkers, respectively [
17]. Additionally, 43% of boys and 39% of girls from Kosovo were heavy drinkers [
18]. Thus, such an alarming trend of a rapid increase in the prevalence of HD over the adolescent years is proven in this study. What is more worrying, regarding the high prevalence of alcohol drinking, it is evident that the majority of adolescents initiate with HD at an earlier age (14–16 years).
Supportively, a Brazilian study noted that the average age of drinking onset was 10.8 years [
27]. Moreover, an Australian study that followed adolescents over seven years, from 12 to 19 years of age, reported a rapid increase in drinking from 12 years of age which was related to alcohol abuse in later adolescence to 19 years of age [
28]. HD was prevalent among 46.8% of Norwegian and 38.9% of young Australian adults aged 19–25 years, which was influenced by drinking behaviors in early adolescence at ages 14–16 years [
29]. Thus, our finding that alcohol consumption increases rapidly from early adolescence is logical. What is more worrying, drinking in early adolescence influences high prevalence of drinking in late adolescence and adulthood [
29].
Due to different settings, life opportunities, and socioeconomic status, one could expect differences in lifestyle factors such as sports participation and alcohol consumption among individuals living in different environments (i.e., urban and rural living environments). Indeed, a study by Hoffmann [
20] recorded that sports participation was associated with alcohol use, with a stronger relationship among youth living in higher socioeconomic neighborhoods (i.e., urban community). This could be explained by the fact that adolescents who live in urban communities have higher accessibility to sports facilities and organized activities [
30,
31]. Additionally, urban adolescents probably have better accessibility to bars and clubs that provide alcoholic drinks and a better financial status, which allows them to purchase alcoholic beverages. Hence, we expected that the living environment can be a factor that influences relationships between sport factors and HD as well. However, we did not find evidence of such considerations. Even more, it seems that there is no difference in alcohol consumption between adolescents living in the urban or rural environments. Supportively to our findings, a study on adolescents and young adults aged 14–25 did not find urban–rural differences in drinking alcohol [
32]. In our study, the main reason for a similar prevalence of alcohol drinking in urban and rural youth is probably related to the fact that alcohol prevalence in B&H is generally high, which logically resulted in a high prevalence of alcohol drinking both among rural and urban adolescents, irrespective of the living environment. The similarity in prevalence of HD probably resulted even in similar relationship between sport factors and HD in urban- and rural-youth (please see following discussion).
4.2. Sport Participation and Alcohol Consumption
Given that participation in sports is known to be related to positive developmental outcomes, such as self-esteem, academic achievement, and physical health, sports are considered to be a mechanism of encouraging pro-social behavior [
33]. Consequently, active sports participation is often considered a protective factor against adolescent substance misuse, and the relationship between sport participation and substance misuse, including alcohol consumption, has been investigated [
26]. However, while some studies reported higher levels of alcohol consumption in adolescents who were engaged in some form of sport compared to those who were not involved in sports activities, other studies highlighted sports participation as a protective factor against alcohol use [
14,
34]. These inconsistencies suggest that participating in sports does not always increase an individual’s vulnerability to alcohol use and that sports are protective against alcohol use in some cases, while in others sport should be observed as a risk factor for substance misuse [
35].
Our findings at least partially support such considerations, indicating sport participation as a factor specifically related to alcohol consumption in adolescents. We evidenced a higher occurrence of HD at the start of high school (i.e., study baseline) among those adolescents who participated in but eventually quit sports. It seems that quitting sports before high school may be a risk factor for adolescents to be involved in HD at the start of high school. Supportively, similar results were evidenced in a previous study that investigated adolescents at the age of 16 and reported that quitting sports was a risk factor for HD in late adolescence [
17]. However, it is noteworthy that this trend was not observed in any of the three follow-ups in the current study, although HD has increased in each follow-up (please see previous Discussion). Most probably, other socio-demographic, familial, or school factors possibly contributed to increasing HD in this period of life (e.g., early adolescence), consequently decreasing the effect of quitting sports as a risk factor for HD.
Our results point to another important relationship. Briefly, lower occurrence of HD at the start of the high school was evidenced for adolescents being involved in sports, indicating that sport participation at the beginning of high school may be protective factor against HD. Such results are in contrast to the study that reported a higher occurrence of HD among 16 years old adolescents who were more involved in sports (i.e., had a higher number of training sessions per week) [
19]. This emphasizes that the influence of sport participation on alcohol consumption changes over the years. Even in our study, where adolescents were tested in four testing waves, the associations between sports factors and HD prevalence changed considerably comparing study baseline and follow-ups (i.e., sports participation was not found to be a protective factor against HD in all three follow-ups).
All previously said can be additionally confirmed by the results of a prospective analysis. In brief, sports factors obtained at the study baseline (at the beginning of high school education) were not correlated to HD initiation over the study course. It must be mentioned that in these analyses, we did not include those adolescents who reported HD at the study baseline. Therefore, it is clear that factors related to HD-initiation after the age of 14 years should be investigated outside of the sport context. However, irrespective of the non-significant association between sports factors and HD initiation, the fact that sport was not evidenced as protective against HD deserves attention. In short, despite the common perception that sports participation develops pro-social behavior, it is simultaneously associated with certain risks of higher alcohol consumption in youth. With this regard, a specific socio-cultural environment of sport deserves attention.
In a sport environment, alcohol consumption is common, and in some cases, it is set as a socio-cultural imperative [
36]. Young athletes often find themselves in situations where alcohol is consumed, and it is difficult for them to remain spared from the influence of the environment, and “in their defence,” they start consuming alcohol themselves [
37]. Some studies present the common causes of such phenomena. First, it is emphasized that the consumption of some types of alcoholic beverages (primarily beer) is socially accepted and even encouraged in sports environments. Likewise, it is not uncommon for beer consumption to be perceived as a way to improve recovery after strenuous sports training or competition [
38]. Second, alcohol is the most widespread sedative in the world, and its consumption, to a certain extent, contributes to mental and physical relaxation. Therefore, it is not surprising that athletes often consume it after training or stressful competitions. The third possible explanation is related to the specifics of the region where the sample was drawn. In brief, Bosnia and Herzegovina is actually a Mediterranean country where alcohol consumption is common and widespread [
26]. One can argue about the Islamic religion (a significant part of the population and Islamic Muslims) and the known boundaries of the Islamic religion against alcohol. However, studies conducted so far confirmed that religious affiliation in this country is not related to lower alcohol consumption, at least not in youth [
26,
39].
To sum up, this study recorded an alarming incidence of students that drink alcohol starting from an early age. Public health authorities should be informed on these findings in order to make preventive interventions to stop adolescents from early start of drinking alcohol, which is particularly important for adolescents who quit sports who were found to be in risk for early onset of HD. Therefore, apart from public health authorities our results should be spread among sport clubs and schools, with the message that youth should continue practicing sports in order to stay away from hazardous behaviors such as alcohol drinking. However, to do so, all stakeholders, including health and educational authorities, should make sports more accessible to everyone and enable participation for individuals that are not willing or able to partake in sports competitions but would like to do sports recreationally.
4.3. Limitations and Strengths
The main limitation of the study is related to the fact that variables were self-reported. Therefore, it is possible that participants leaned toward socially desirable answers, which could be particularly possible for alcohol consumption. However, when compared to other studies conducted in the region that used the same measurement tools and studied somewhat older adolescents, it seems that data reported here are plausible [
8,
17]. Additionally, our results highlighted very complex relationships between sport participation and alcohol drinking, while we used a relatively limited number of variables examining sport factors, mainly because of the prospective repeated measurement design. Therefore, in future studies more detailed analysis of the sport factors in relation to substance misuse behaviors is needed, and special attention should be placed on the type of sport adolescents are involved at (i.e., team-sports, individual-sports, martial-arts, or aesthetic sports). In this study, the AUDIT score of 8 was considered as a cut-off point for HD, although a cut-off point of 5 was suggested for younger adolescents [
25]. However, this was conducted intentionally to allow meaningful comparison with previous studies done with older adolescents from the country [
17,
19]. Finally, in this study we did not specifically observe eventual influence of gender on studied relationship (i.e., analyses were not gender stratified), but this was due to the fact that we observed participants throughout several time points. Therefore, in further studies specific gender-stratified analyses on a problem are warranted.
Despite limitations, the study has several strengths. Most importantly, this is one of the rare prospective studies examining the problem of the relationship between sport-factors and alcohol drinking, while systematically observing potential problems of the urban/rural environment among younger adolescents. Additionally, this is probably the first investigation that examined the problem in southeastern Europe, a region with a high prevalence of alcohol drinking among adolescents. Therefore, we believe that our findings will increase knowledge in the field and initiate further analyses.