Dr Marty's Blog

Guest Blog Curtosity of Mark Hiser

Bio:  Mark Hiser

26 years Vice President in Construction Management, Phoenix Contractors, Inc.

11 Years professor in Construction Management at Eastern Michigan University

16 years of coaching U18 and under Dexter Giants Baseball, Youth Football and Travel Basketball.  Mentored over a dozen young athletes to Div. I, Div. II, Div. III athletic programs.

15 years Singer/Songwriter/Publisher/Producer for The Band Most Wanted, Hisemoe Music and Toyland Studios, over 45 published original compositions.  Released four full length musical recordings. 

Motivation: 

I have heard so many people say that the coach does not motivate the kids, or my kid does not like his coach so many times that I thought it would be good to write a few notes about motivation, fairness and some of the fundamental issues at the core of todays utopian first society.  As a former athlete, a dad, a coach, a singer/song writer, a music producer, a college professor and a trusted business professional I have had to produce, understand and be motivated through many days of highs and lows, something I’m not always good at!  I will use high school football for an example because there is so many factors that real motivation; fairness and general work ethic should be obvious.To begin with, football is hard work, you have practice where you get clobbered and yelled at, you have to run and do crazy drills, you might not get to be the star, you have to know the plays and your team counts on you to do your job whatever that job may be, and after all that uncomfortable stuff, you have a great chance at failure.  Not to mention it’s hot, it’s cold and working out sucks!!  In contrast to all these requirements and conditions of the game, being a responsible adult in society requires many of the fundamental drivers that are used while growing up in competitive sports.

Working consistently hard and being responsible so you can make a good living, at what point do you realize that you’ll spend a large part of the money you make on family, kids, parties, presents, insurance, doctors, gas, food, electricity, mortgage and bills, bills, bills?  I’d rather play football if I still could, they could even pay me my same annual salary that I make at my day job!  So why should any coach on the planet be responsible to motivate anybody?  Most likely he’s a dad or will be someday and already has his hands full with the same things I just mentioned?  He has an obligation to the program to run a clean operation and treat kids fair (we’ll touch on fair more in a minute).  He has an obligation to put together a competitive program; some communities call it a wining program.  The coach will be personally motivated by the challenge, the kids, and the families to compete and to (hopefully win).  As an athlete, coach, performer and business professional the motivation is always very similar, it really is!

So why is it anybody in the worlds job to motivate anybody else? And why is everything that happens badly somebody else’s fault?  Outside of being motivated to do well for you, one reason is for the betterment of a bigger unit or the whole of a family or the unity of a group or the competitiveness of the team.  Pretty reasonable stuff!  Here’s the catch, if for example in my profession I have a team and somebody on my team is unhappy dragging tail and not producing because it’s not all about that member, or it’s not what they would like to be doing, then I have a problem as the boss keeping my team on track and competitive in our market place.  If my team is a part of more teams that make up a company then we are all needed for the success of the whole company.  If other teams start to fail it has severe impact on the balance of the other teams and yes motivation can immediately become a problem.

Humane behavior is subject to many emotional problems so dealing with all these variations can be a real tough project for any one person to handle; therefore in the words, team, family, group, organization and members, in all walks of life we are expected to come to the program with a solid moral fabric and ethics.  Based on our political landscape and the media, solid moral fabric and ethics are something many effluent aspiring politicians, football coaches and superstars have major difficulty with.  Our basic humane package should include the entry-level requirements of integrity, fairness, grace, humility and motivation.  This is usually developed during childhood with the help and guidance of family, religion and education.  If each coach and player brings that fundamental package to camp they have the start of making something bigger, something better.  If each boss and employee brings that to work everyday, you will have a successful operation.

So why is it always the coach, or the boss, or the teacher, or the mom, or the dad’s fault for all these basic human requirements for survival at any level in life?  Back to football and sports.  I assume some intellectual people may have little tolerance for contact sports, good for them, however; in our civilization you will find that everything you learn in sports is paralleled to surviving life on earth in general and unless we become a fully utopian socialist society ruined by kings, that is how things will continue to work for a long time.  You remain motivated to do good things, fairly and try to be successful for you and the good of that something bigger that you are a part of.  Sports do teach many lessons and it has a lasting impression on your life.  Trust me, for part of our future motivation will come from our previous failures at many things.  So why do we need to look elsewhere to blame our gambles and losses on anyone?  The first thing a coach should probably ask his players to check at the door is blame.

For a high school football player motivation can become blurred by daily distractions and unconventional thought.  There are so many things happening at this time in life, you have cars, girls, phones, video games, movies, friends, homework and oh yeah football!  If your activities involve drugs, tobacco and alcohol, sorry dude there should be ZERO tolerance for that anywhere around your TEAM PERIOD.  Your life’s wellbeing begins with balance and substances that shift that balance should be avoided for they can distort your views and the general appearance of many things surrounding you.  They pry at your moral fabric, fool your senses and initiate a slippery slope to de-motivation.  If you need proof please take the time to look around you and see how people bring this upon themselves with the use of drugs and alcohol.

So with all those things to prioritize and sort out, why is it the coach that has to get you motivated to play football for nine games, a scrimmage, three weeks of camp and if your motivated the play off’s?  Please note that while you have all those things to do, consider your coach has to work, pay his bills and raise his family, and all that by the way takes a huge sacrifice while they teach you life lessons and the game of football.  In reality it becomes a pretty incredible feat, it really does!  I can’t say that all coaches are fair or equal or have similar philosophies.  Many are too self-important and some have self-interests and agendas outside of the team, trust me that can be the most frustrating situation for any player at any level.  I have been a victim of a few of these dealings myself and have witnessed how bad a guy was proved twenty years later down the road, well after my day in the sun.  In the current headlines we are finding out that there are trusted individuals that have damaged many lives under the guise of something greater. In life there is an unfortunate reality that many people in todays world are missing a few key ethical/moral ingredients in their basic package.

So what about fairness?  The term fair does not mean equal.  Fairness and equality work in conjunction together but only prove contradictory to each other if you define them the same.  Pay to play sports is misunderstood.  It should be defined as pay to participate.  The misconception of this usage causes great angst in communities and parents expecting everything to be equal.  We all pay our taxes that support our education system so should our children all get the same grade in school even if they don’t know the subject as well as the others?  Is that how things are supposed to work or is just in sports?

In fairness to the team, should the coach be obligated to play those that maybe work less hard or not motivated as greatly to progress at the sport than those that have?  In fairness to the individual that comes to everything, gets good grades and contributes in spirit and practice not get a chance to play in the game?  What is fair…because unless you have been living in a cave for that past 1,000 years, life is not equal in any way shape or form, and for that matter it is not fair either?  But fairness is something we have an opportunity to teach.  If you have an athlete who is not eligible because of grades and sit’s out for three games and then get’s to play in front of the other remaining eligible kids the first game of eligibility he get’s is it fair to the other kids on the team?  Let me ask the same question in another context before you answer this question.  If you have a kid that has an aggressive work ethic, big on sports motivation on the field and can contribute on the field greatly to help the team improve and win every Friday night but, has a broken home, living on the edge of poverty, has to look out for his other siblings because mom has three jobs and maybe some other issues, and because of his home life, has a hard time dedicating all the time necessary to complete all the home work to keep his grades out of jeopardy.  What is fair?  Now many will say homework comes first, understandably so from where many of us are coming from the comfort of our great homes and families ect.  But that task maybe way more difficult if you are coming from low income not so great living space with a level of much less comfort than the other kids come from.  So what is fair? Obviously that student comes from a less fair background than so many others on his team.  So what is fair?  What if some of the better academic students took this matter on their own to help that student become eligible and help there team?  Why them?  Exactly; so why the coach?  There are many people in the community that can contribute to the academic success of a troubled student so why is it coach’s fault and again what becomes fair?

In talking to a college coach recently he said you would not believe the amount of parental harassment they receive by email.  I would think that having 20 horrid emails a day would be enough to de-motivate me from ever wanting to coach a team at any level ever again.  Because the definition of fair is currently luke warm and is potentially the cause of much heart ache and confusion let’s move back to motivation!  We’ve established that fairness is subject for interpretation, unfortunately but true.  Beyond wanting the team to develop, progress and be competitive, how is it the coach’s job to get any more motivation out of his players and why do so many expect so much from everyone else?

Some coaches are very good at it but it usually starts with doing good things for the better of the bigger whole!  Ask your young athlete these questions:  Do you choose to go to practice after school, the gym after dinner, run or bike after the gym, shower, successfully complete your home work and get to bed by 10:30 every night during your season?  Or do you go to practice after school, shower after practice, dinner after shower then proceed to play C.O.D. with your bro’s drink soda, watch TV, go to the movies, be social, hit up facebook, maybe do some homework, party and sleep?  Do you show up at practice and remain focused on the daily teachings by coach, do you run and lift at 100% on all sprints and drills, do you respect your coach look him in the eye when he speaks and answer yes sir, no sir and help other players succeed? Or do you think you are such a bad ass, that its all about you, you disrespect the staff, half listen at practice, take a few plays off now and then to nurse your wounds and give 80% most of the time, look down when your coach speaks, laugh at rude comments your buds make and don’t help other team members be successful?  Do you walk on the field on Friday night and know what your count is before their are no more Friday nights, hit and run hard on every play like it’s the last one ever, do you care that 5,000 plus people from your community come to your game every Friday to cheer for you and support you, do you respect your opponent, do you fear your maker and ask of him and thank him for your well being before, during and after every game, do you respect the officials, who are there to patrol the grounds to enforce your safety, do you study the game, understand the situations, have you best prepared watching film and know what the tendency is of the other players and teams, do you thank your teammates, do you encourage your teammates, do you play hard for each others well being, do you play till the whistle blows, do you fight to the finish, do you thank your staff for all they put into getting you prepared and a chance to be part of something bigger?  Or do you pout, do you worry about your stats, do you worry about who’s looking at you, do you take plays off because it’s not on your side of the field, do you let somebody run by you with the ball because someone else blew his detail, it’s not your fault, is it the coaches fault, is it your teammates fault, is it the trainers fault, is it not you?  When you are given an opportunity like a chance to be part of something bigger you accept it with humility and pride.  When you take that opportunity for granted it, you become unmotivated and take a ride to an unfortunate quick end to the game.  When you embrace that opportunity and work hard to be a bigger contributor to the bigger whole of something great than you are thankful and motivated.

Your very motivation has to come from with in, your contributions have to come from with in, your opportunities are available for your discovery, your time is limited use it wisely and dig deeper for the satisfaction comes from your contribution for the opportunity to be a part of something bigger.  This has to be taught to all our young students and athletes for all this can fast forward 20 years into their future.  Real life waits for them and will happen before anyone knows it!  If we make today count the best we can and have a plan of improvement, well being and goodness, give 110%, leave it on the field and leave no regrets about it, then I’m telling you, we have a chance to succeed and lay our blame to rest.