The purpose of this study was to investigate differences in exercise flow, exercise addiction, self-efficiency, and school adaptation between student athletes and students participating in sports clubs. It surveyed 194 student athletes registered for sports organizations affiliated with the KOC and 194 students participating in school sports clubs and local sports clubs, ranged from elementary to high school students. It was performed to analyze descriptive statistics, reliability and validity, and independent t-test was conducted to identify differences between the two groups using SPSS 24.0. The results showed that first, among the sub-factors of exercise flow, the student athletes were higher in the clear target variable, and the sports club students were higher in the moorish variable. Second, in all of the sub-factors of exercise addiction, student athletes were higher than sports club students. Third, sports club students were higher than student athletes in the persistence variable among sub-factors of self-efficiency. Finally, among the sub-factors of school adaptation, sports club students were higher than student athletes in teacher relations and school class variables, but in friendship variable, student athletes were higher than sports club students. The results of this study show that participating in a sports club is more helpful than as student athletes for the development of social psychological factors that are very important in adolescent stage.