October 13, 2021 • 21 mins
Frank Martin is approaching his 10th season as the Head Men’s Basketball Coach for the University of South Carolina. He led the Gamecocks to the NCAA Final Four in 2017 and earned four NCAA Tournament bids in his previous head coaching role with Kansas State. Coach Martin joins Nick to discuss youth sports and adversity as well as the important role parents and coaches play in supporting children’s development through sports.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
There's nothing worse than watching a young person cry because
they don't think they're good enough. But we're failing them
if we do their jobs for them. We have to
make them deal with it and then as an adult,
helped teach them how to get up so they can
have success. This is The Reformed Sports Project, a podcast
(00:26):
about restoring healthy balance and perspective in all areas of
sports through education and advocacy. I'm Nick Bonacoort from the
Reformed Sports Project podcast. Joining me today is Frank Martin,
men's basketball head coach at the University of South Carolina.
Coach Martin and I talk youth sports development and specialization.
(00:46):
I'm really grateful and humbled having he's extremely successful, runs
one of the top programs in the country from the
basketball side, and head coach of the men's basketball team
at the University of South Carolina, The Game Cox Coach
Frank Martin, coach man, thanks for hopping on. Really pumped.
Its great to be here with you and extremely excited
to have a great conversation and love what you're doing,
Love the direction you're taking this in not not to
(01:08):
be critical of people, but to make everyone a little
bit more understanding of reality, so a lot of respect. Well,
I appreciate you there, And that's the whole premise here.
And this is where I want to start, because it
starts at a young age. We're talking youth sports, we're
talking athletic development. Nowadays, it's like we're taking professional athletic
ideology and trying to apply to six, seven, eight, nine,
(01:28):
ten year olds. It's like professional sports for young kids,
and it starts with this specialization. Forget about sample in
different sports. And if you can get a layup in
and the hoop and you're six years old, it's like,
forget about baseball. Put that down. You're playing basketball year round.
I just want to ask you, what are your thoughts
of kids specializing really early and being pushed to do
so versus sampling of variety of sports, particularly at the
(01:50):
young ages. I mean, I'm not into telling people how
to be parents. I mean, they got to figure that
one out. But what I will say is if you
allow your child to play multiple sports, every sport requires
different muscle memory and different mind process and physical abilities.
When you combine them all, eventually, when they get old enough,
(02:11):
they're even a better athlete. Whenever they decide to pursue
one sport rather than just always doing the same movements
because you only allow to play a certain sport. Secondly,
you get them around different mindsets. Football players have a
different mindset, the basketball players. Basketball players have a different mindset,
the baseball players. You get young children to understand the
(02:32):
different mindsets and the different approaches and the mentalities, and
I think it's conducive to a better prepared young man
rather than this whole kind of just focus them in
on one sport and just where his rear end out
at a young age, which I believe is then conducive
to knee injuries and our sport and basketball soft tissue
(02:53):
injuries and things of that nature, good injuries from stress
fractures because of overuse in doing the same things over
and over and over from a young age. You're touching
on the physical aspect of it. But as you're talking,
I'm thinking about the mental burnout. I see it all
the time on the baseball side a lot of games,
but often here parents say, like, I think there's no
such thing as burnout burnout? Who gets burnt out? That
(03:14):
must not be a real athlete. What are your thoughts
on literally getting mentally exhausted kids burning out. I think
parents would say that are the ones that never went
through it at a young age, that never got forced
to play just one sport and were made to workout play.
You see, because parents of kids that are like fifteen
years old right now, like in basketball, summer basketball wasn't
as big as it is now. So parents, when this
(03:37):
age group and they were fifteen years old, you played
your high school season and maybe you played a couple
of tournaments in the spring and summer. That's it. There
wasn't this every weekend, different tournament, different place, play four
games in one day. You didn't have that. You go
play at the park on Saturdays and played all days,
but you didn't play Monday through Thursday or Monday through
Friday all day. I mean, you might go and park
(03:58):
and shoot some balls or whatever, but that's it. And
here's the other part to that. There's no burnout if
you let the kid be. But the problem is that
you've got coaches coaching the kids, and then you've got
the parents hounding the kids during the game, and then
after the game, the parents in the car being critical
of the young man to coach and whatever, and that
young person eventually just like, holy cow, man, I'm tired
(04:20):
of this at a young age. And then what the
kids do when they're tired and frustrated they shut down.
So the people say they got bad attitudes. They don't
have bad attitudes. Are just young people that are just
bogged down. And so I think that's a problem. Well,
you bring me back to when you had mentioned when
when you went on your very very famous passionate press
conference when you talked about quite frankly, the stands and
(04:41):
right yelling at officials and all that. And I've talked
to coach. My boys wrestle, they play all different things,
and I've talked to wrestling coaches. I've talked to umpires,
I've talked to referee. There's like, as short as people
don't want to go out there and call games regardless
of the event, because they're like, man, I don't you
get harassed by some people like over zealous, quite frankly adults. Parents,
you talk about shutting down, what are we doing as parents?
(05:01):
From your perspective as a high level college coach, what
are we doing his parents that's impacting officials and ultimately
hindering the kid's experience From developing. I mean, I'm all
for structure, I'm all for discipline, but we can't all
discipline the kids on the same things. Like what do
I mean, let's talk baseball. I'm an old baseball guy,
(05:21):
so I like talking baseball. Young kids strikes out or
doesn't run hard the first base because he's frustrated because
he grounds out the second base, and and he just
doesn't run hard. So by the time that kid comes
off the base pass, the coach the manager is probably
gonna if he's doing his job making the kid understand
how to do things better. Well, you got the parents
(05:42):
screaming from the stands. That's embarrassing to the kid. So
now the kid is embarrassed, so he shuts down. So
then when they're getting a car, now the parents all
over the kids. So now the kids being constantly disciplined
over the same thing by different people, which sometimes the
opinion of the parent is different than the opinion of
the coach's coaching the game. So that creates a mental
(06:03):
challenge for young people. I say this all the time.
Professional athletes, Yeah, you can scream whatever at them. There's
a reason they make so much money. It's not just
that they're physically gifted, but mentally they're in a place
where they know how to like hide and keep just
what I call noise out of their heads. Young kids
don't know how to keep noise out of their heads.
Young kids, and in today's day of social media, where
(06:25):
they're gonna get beat up. Fifteen year olds are getting
criticized on social media because they had a bad day
on the field or on the court, and fifteen year
olds read their social media. I'm lucky I'm at that
age right now where I don't read my social media.
I might use social media, but I don't read my
social media. Young kids read their social media. So now
(06:45):
they're getting beat up by all kinds of different people
over the same thing. And that's not fair to young
kids because they're not mentally in a place to manage that.
I'm gonna shift a little gear, Sycus. That's a great point,
because does the parent just have to be a parent?
Parents get confused because they say, well, the coach doesn't
know what the hell they're doing. One thing I see
that gets lost. High school coaches I've literally heard tell
me it's hard to coach nowadays because you're afraid you're
(07:09):
gonna get fired. You know, if you if you coach
the kid, you know, if you if the kid sits
the bench, Sure, whatever the case is. But at the
same time I hear from every college coach I talked
to one of the most sought after characteristics is competition.
Kids that love to compete, compete to win. How do
you push without being overbearing? Right? Coaching is probably the
(07:29):
one profession that everyone that doesn't coach has better opinions
and better thoughts than the people that do coach. You
don't shoot around reading about people that are CEOs of
corporations and everyone's saying they don't know what they're doing,
they should have made the decision better. But in coaching,
that's the one profession that everyone feels that they have
a better answer on how to do things. And that's okay,
(07:50):
I mean, it is what it is. It's a difficult,
difficult time right now to be a disciplinarian. Heck, as
a parent, you gotta be careful. As a disc splinary,
I've always been a big believer of this. You better
have personal relationships with your players. This is not something
that I started now because times have changed. You've got
to have personal relationship with your players. They have to
(08:12):
know that you're committed to helping them above and beyond
the game of basketball. And when you do that, and
they're more receptive to allowing you to be more I
don't want to say aggressive, that's not the right word,
but holding them accountable at a higher level. The one
thing that I've never had time for is you cannot
make it personal and negative towards a player. I don't
(08:34):
believe in that. I say it all the time. I'm
really loud, but I'm really positive. I might yell a lot,
but I don't degrade people. And that's the one thing
that as long as you don't cross that line where
you're creating a negative atmosphere in your relationship with a
player or a negative atmosphere with the words that you
use because you're degrading a player, I think everything is
(08:54):
gonna be okay. But with that said, in our sport
and basketball, over the last four years, there are over
eight hundred and fifty transfers a year in Division one basketball,
and that is a direct correlation to what you just explained.
Parents not allowing coaches at the high school level to
coach their kids, and as soon as the coach tries
to coach their kids. They either try to get the
(09:15):
coach fired or they pull their kid and transfer them
to a different school where they don't hold them as accountable.
So they get to college and they're gonna be held accountable.
And when they're not comfortable in that world, they do
what they learn in high school. They get up and
run from it. And that's unfortunate because young kids don't
want to run away from problems, but if you allow
them to at a young age, they're going to become
adults that run away from problems. And that's the one
(09:38):
problem that we do have in society through sports in
today's day and age. The word adversity comes to mind.
From my vantage point, I look back and I didn't
recognize that when I was seventeen years old going through
those tough times. But then you fall back on things
as an adult, least for me, I'm thirty five years old.
I'm thinking about, Wow, I've been here before in different setting,
back in my college days or whatever. The terms helicopter
(09:58):
parents and snowplowed parents were paring the path for the
child as opposed to preparing the child for the path.
How important is it to allow the kids experience and
learn to work through adversity through their sport. I'm gonna
use an example doesn't involve sports. As a former mathematics teacher,
I had kids that came to class every day, They
did every homework assignment, They tried their rear ends off.
(10:20):
They were polite, they were respectful, they cared. They took
a test, they got a sixty on it. I didn't say,
you know what, they did all their work. They're a
nice kid. Let me give him a beast. No, they
gotta They gott a mask. And what happens is dealing
with failure. That's dealing with something didn't go right. So
now it's my job not to make it easy on
(10:41):
them by giving them a nice grade, by get them
the grade they deserve, but then helping him understand so
they can figure out what did they do wrong because
they put in all the effort, but something wasn't done
the right way, so they didn't have success on that test.
It's my job as a teacher that make them deal
with failure, but make them understand and how to grow
from failure. And I believe that's huge from a teaching standpoint.
(11:05):
That's what I do in coaching, and it's what I
do as a parent. It's the way I handle it.
I told my son all the time, I said, it's
not my job to prevent you from failing. It's my
job to help teach you how to stand up when
you fail. And it's what I tell my children, it's
what I tell my players, and it's the way I
handle the classroom. Some of us have been down a
certain road and we don't want our children to go
(11:25):
through that road. And there's nothing worse and watching a
young person cry because they don't think they're good enough.
But we're failing them. If we do the job for them,
we're failing them. If we blind them or home away
from adversity. We have to make them deal with it,
and then as an adult, helped teach them how to
get up, how to dust themselves off, and how to
(11:48):
go at it differently. It's better prepared so they can
have success. And I think that's the biggest difference in
today's day and age compared to how it used to be.
That's Frank Martin, University of South Carolina men's basketball head coach.
After the break, Coach Martin and I will talk about
adversity and teaching kids how to deal with failure. I'm
Nick Boncourt and you're listening to the Reform Sports Project podcast.
(12:16):
Welcome back to the Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonecourt,
and today we have Frank Martin men's basketball head coach
at the University of South Carolina. Where we left off,
we were discussing the importance of structure and preparing athletes
for the opportunity to be successful. Nowadays, you're paying the play.
So if I'm a parent, which i am, and there's
(12:37):
many that are, you're paying thousands of dollars coach for
a sports season that used to be kind of like
fifty bucks, you know whatever, and you're paying thousands of dollars.
So you want to return on that investment. So what
return on an investment is, Well, we gotta chase trophies, right,
we gotta win. If I'm paying this money, I better
be seeing my kid win and it better be setting
it up to get a scholarship down the road. So
it's almost like this whole mantra of we're always living
(12:59):
for in the home at trophies and this is building
up to a scholarship down to talk about win it
all costs and the difference at least what you think
of win it all costs, because I think there's a
difference at every level, but college livelihoods and professional are
paid to win, right, but not so much at nine,
ten eleven. Keep talking a little bit about win it
all costs and the differences of the youth and college
(13:20):
and professional level. You just said one of the biggest
problems we have. It's been new to basketball. Used to
be like one AU team maybe two per state. They
had tryouts, you made the team, you didn't make the team.
You didn't make the team, pretty much done. You went
back and just worked on your game all summer your
high school, or you went out and played baseball or whatever.
Now there's seven AU team for every neighborhood, so they've
(13:43):
got to have enough people to play. So then parents
are paying all this money for their child to be
on the team. Well, if you hit rewind And I'm
not saying the way it used to be is better
and this way is wrong. I'm just comparing. We grew
up playing at the park, Well, the park is free.
Now if you're are it, shows up at the park
to complain because they didn't let you play, or you
(14:04):
only played one game previous weekend or whatever it may be.
They're not going to disrespect your parents, but your parents
are gonna leave. Next time you show up at the park,
someone's will whoop your rear in, or you're never or
you're never gonna be allowed to play again. Being a
cry baby and not standing up and owning up to
your responsibilities now, because parents pay all this money, and
(14:24):
then not only do they pay money for their child
to be on a team, but then they have to
spend their money so they can travel to go support
their children. And it's not just one weekend, it's every weekend. Now.
Parents are invested, and if you're gonna ask them to
be given all this money, it's hard as a person
that runs the club to then tell them that they
got to sit down and their opinions don't need to
be heard. I pay money for my children to play
(14:47):
in club teams, but I've lived the life of a coach,
so I go sit in a corner. I don't say
a work. As long as my kids are being treated
fairly and equally, I don't say a word. And when
I do have to say something, it's a conversation between
me and the coach or me and the club person privately.
It's not something out in front of everybody. And that's
the slippery slope that you're asking. Like high school teams.
(15:09):
Parents don't fund high school teams. The school does, so
it's easier to manage the parents because they're not financially invested.
When you're asking parents to give you all this money
so and you can travel. And those parents want those
kids to play, and when they don't play, they're gonna
be mad. And my frustration is that when the parents
being upset, it's how they manage that moment when they
get upset. You can't be negative about other adults in
(15:32):
front of children, and unfortunately, we've created an atmosphere in
youth sports where parents are always critical of coaches and referees,
the other adults on the court in front of the children.
That creates confusion for a child. That creates a moment
where now the child child don't understand the monetary component,
but the child doesn't understand, well, my mom my dad
(15:53):
thinks this adult over is, I don't know what he's doing,
so I get to be critical too, and it creates
that problem for young people. There are a lot of kids,
a lot of parents that are listen to us, that
are trying, they're working hard, they listen. I firmly believe
all of us as parents, we genuinely want and I
think there's a lot of people that just misinformed. They
don't know, they don't have the experience, and they're seeking it,
so they'll listen to this looking for tips, and their
(16:14):
kids want to be college athletes. They're doing they're trying
to do the right things. The parents support the kid
allow them to fail. How can kids come play in
the SEC? How can they come play for South Carolina
and then forget they're not good enough, they're not talent
enough to play at that level. How about just becoming
a college athlete? A student athlete at the college level.
What's the best way to do it. I'll start with
this one because this one's always fun to me. You
(16:35):
start recruiting a young person and the parents say to you, well,
I really don't care about athletics. I'm all about academics.
Talk to me about the academics at your school. Well,
when I see the kids transcripts, it doesn't appear that
the parents very involved in the academics at the high school. Level.
So that was always that line always find interesting. So
I say that because first and foremost young people need
(16:57):
to have discipline and everything that they do in order
to have success at the collegiate level. So you, as
a parent, better make sure that academically there is an
environmental structure of direction and guidance at the high school level.
And it can't be because of sports. It has to
be because of life. Then if once you take care
(17:17):
of that part, and then you add the part about sports,
because because here's the deal. Playing sports is a privilege.
It's not a given, it's not a right. And if
you want people to understand it that way, then you
better make them earn their way on the court. What
I do with my children as I make them to
school work, I gotta make sure a do school work
and that teaches them work ethic, attention to detail, focus,
(17:38):
working to achieve something which is better grades and then
obviously that creates knowledge and then that gives them the
privilege of playing the sport. Secondly, when it comes to
playing the sport, you can't make it happen. There's no
magic Wand I tell kids all the time and their
parents and are recruited, I hear people say all the
time we make pros. Let me tell you something. I've
(17:59):
been doing this dirty five years and I've coached guys
that have played seventeen years in the NBA that I
am as close to as any other human being in
the world. If I had a magic formula to make
a probe, my guys will be in the NBA right now. Unfortunately,
that's not the way it works. I can't make it happen.
All I can do is teach and prepare them for
(18:21):
the day they get an opportunity they can succeed. And
it's the same way I spent sixteen years as a
high school coach. I can't guarantee those players scholarships. There's
nothing I can do that guarantees them scholarships. All they
can do is work their tails off and be a
good team. May be a good student. That way, Whenever
somebody at the collegiate level shows interest in that young person,
(18:44):
I can convince them as a coach that they're about
all the right things. They have a work ethic, look
at their grades academically, They're gonna do what they're supposed
to do. They don't get in trouble off the court,
so they're gonna protect you in your community. Then lastly,
look how much better this young person has gotten every
you're in high school, so guess well, when he gets
to your campus, he's gonna keep getting better. That means
he's gonna help you win games. And parents, sometimes they
(19:07):
want to put the cart in front of the horse,
and there's no shortcut. I heard someone say to the the
other day, I'm gonna use professional basketball, but it's the
same for all the professional sports. That's an exclusive club.
Not everyone is allowed in that club. It's not just
how how you can jump or how fast you can
run to get you into the club. There's a lot
of things you need, and God's blessing comes first and foremost.
(19:30):
But that club is not for everybody, and eventually we're
all gonna have to understand and deal with that one.
But that's what I would say. Just make sure that
your child is accepting coaching, accepting discipline, accepting growth. Let
it happen. Here's something I love listening. I'm not a
great reader. I read, but I'm more of a listener.
So when people speak, I really pay attention. And I
(19:51):
was driving in my car middle of the season last year.
Now I was frustrated because we're a really young team
and we weren't playing as well as I needed to play.
There's a motivational speaker in a radio station and he said,
always remember this. I have no idea why this guy
said this on this day, but it helped me and
I used it for my team. I allowed me to
coaching better. He said, whenever you're trying to get a
(20:13):
rose to bloom, you can't make it bloom bigger or
faster than it's destined to bloom. All you can do
is keep putting water on it and allow it to
bloom at its own rate into its own size. The
same way we're coaching young it's the same way we're
raising kids and coaching kids. You can't make them grow
any bigger or any faster than they're destined to be.
(20:35):
All you can do is keep feeding them, education, feeding them,
and feeding them, and allow them to grow at your
own rate. Coach Martin, that was awesome. I cannot thank
you enough. Frank Martin, South Carolina game comp man. I
probably couldn't bention pounds, but I want to go throw
and try to put it up there and they'll probably die.
But you got me you got me fire fired up. Coach.
Thank you so much for your time. I'm truly humbled.
(20:55):
Keep going what you're doing. Man. We all need to
learn and the only way we learn is by folks
like you putting certain things out there for everyone to
listen and learn from. And a lot of respect. Grateful
for your coach, Keep up the great work man. Really
appreciate you, sir An. Thanks to Frank Martin, University of
South Carolina men's basketball head coach for joining me on
the Reform Sports Project podcast. Thanks for listening to the
(21:17):
Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt and our goal
is to restore healthy, balance and perspective in all areas
of sport through education and advocacy. For updates, please follow
us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out our
website by searching for the Reform Sports Project
There's nothing worse than watching a young person cry because
they don't think they're good enough. But we're failing them
if we do their jobs for them. We have to
make them deal with it and then as an adult,
helped teach them how to get up so they can
have success. This is The Reformed Sports Project, a podcast
(00:26):
about restoring healthy balance and perspective in all areas of
sports through education and advocacy. I'm Nick Bonacoort from the
Reformed Sports Project podcast. Joining me today is Frank Martin,
men's basketball head coach at the University of South Carolina.
Coach Martin and I talk youth sports development and specialization.
(00:46):
I'm really grateful and humbled having he's extremely successful, runs
one of the top programs in the country from the
basketball side, and head coach of the men's basketball team
at the University of South Carolina, The Game Cox Coach
Frank Martin, coach man, thanks for hopping on. Really pumped.
Its great to be here with you and extremely excited
to have a great conversation and love what you're doing,
Love the direction you're taking this in not not to
(01:08):
be critical of people, but to make everyone a little
bit more understanding of reality, so a lot of respect. Well,
I appreciate you there, And that's the whole premise here.
And this is where I want to start, because it
starts at a young age. We're talking youth sports, we're
talking athletic development. Nowadays, it's like we're taking professional athletic
ideology and trying to apply to six, seven, eight, nine,
(01:28):
ten year olds. It's like professional sports for young kids,
and it starts with this specialization. Forget about sample in
different sports. And if you can get a layup in
and the hoop and you're six years old, it's like,
forget about baseball. Put that down. You're playing basketball year round.
I just want to ask you, what are your thoughts
of kids specializing really early and being pushed to do
so versus sampling of variety of sports, particularly at the
(01:50):
young ages. I mean, I'm not into telling people how
to be parents. I mean, they got to figure that
one out. But what I will say is if you
allow your child to play multiple sports, every sport requires
different muscle memory and different mind process and physical abilities.
When you combine them all, eventually, when they get old enough,
(02:11):
they're even a better athlete. Whenever they decide to pursue
one sport rather than just always doing the same movements
because you only allow to play a certain sport. Secondly,
you get them around different mindsets. Football players have a
different mindset, the basketball players. Basketball players have a different mindset,
the baseball players. You get young children to understand the
(02:32):
different mindsets and the different approaches and the mentalities, and
I think it's conducive to a better prepared young man
rather than this whole kind of just focus them in
on one sport and just where his rear end out
at a young age, which I believe is then conducive
to knee injuries and our sport and basketball soft tissue
(02:53):
injuries and things of that nature, good injuries from stress
fractures because of overuse in doing the same things over
and over and over from a young age. You're touching
on the physical aspect of it. But as you're talking,
I'm thinking about the mental burnout. I see it all
the time on the baseball side a lot of games,
but often here parents say, like, I think there's no
such thing as burnout burnout? Who gets burnt out? That
(03:14):
must not be a real athlete. What are your thoughts
on literally getting mentally exhausted kids burning out. I think
parents would say that are the ones that never went
through it at a young age, that never got forced
to play just one sport and were made to workout play.
You see, because parents of kids that are like fifteen
years old right now, like in basketball, summer basketball wasn't
as big as it is now. So parents, when this
(03:37):
age group and they were fifteen years old, you played
your high school season and maybe you played a couple
of tournaments in the spring and summer. That's it. There
wasn't this every weekend, different tournament, different place, play four
games in one day. You didn't have that. You go
play at the park on Saturdays and played all days,
but you didn't play Monday through Thursday or Monday through
Friday all day. I mean, you might go and park
(03:58):
and shoot some balls or whatever, but that's it. And
here's the other part to that. There's no burnout if
you let the kid be. But the problem is that
you've got coaches coaching the kids, and then you've got
the parents hounding the kids during the game, and then
after the game, the parents in the car being critical
of the young man to coach and whatever, and that
young person eventually just like, holy cow, man, I'm tired
(04:20):
of this at a young age. And then what the
kids do when they're tired and frustrated they shut down.
So the people say they got bad attitudes. They don't
have bad attitudes. Are just young people that are just
bogged down. And so I think that's a problem. Well,
you bring me back to when you had mentioned when
when you went on your very very famous passionate press
conference when you talked about quite frankly, the stands and
(04:41):
right yelling at officials and all that. And I've talked
to coach. My boys wrestle, they play all different things,
and I've talked to wrestling coaches. I've talked to umpires,
I've talked to referee. There's like, as short as people
don't want to go out there and call games regardless
of the event, because they're like, man, I don't you
get harassed by some people like over zealous, quite frankly adults. Parents,
you talk about shutting down, what are we doing as parents?
(05:01):
From your perspective as a high level college coach, what
are we doing his parents that's impacting officials and ultimately
hindering the kid's experience From developing. I mean, I'm all
for structure, I'm all for discipline, but we can't all
discipline the kids on the same things. Like what do
I mean, let's talk baseball. I'm an old baseball guy,
(05:21):
so I like talking baseball. Young kids strikes out or
doesn't run hard the first base because he's frustrated because
he grounds out the second base, and and he just
doesn't run hard. So by the time that kid comes
off the base pass, the coach the manager is probably
gonna if he's doing his job making the kid understand
how to do things better. Well, you got the parents
(05:42):
screaming from the stands. That's embarrassing to the kid. So
now the kid is embarrassed, so he shuts down. So
then when they're getting a car, now the parents all
over the kids. So now the kids being constantly disciplined
over the same thing by different people, which sometimes the
opinion of the parent is different than the opinion of
the coach's coaching the game. So that creates a mental
(06:03):
challenge for young people. I say this all the time.
Professional athletes, Yeah, you can scream whatever at them. There's
a reason they make so much money. It's not just
that they're physically gifted, but mentally they're in a place
where they know how to like hide and keep just
what I call noise out of their heads. Young kids
don't know how to keep noise out of their heads.
Young kids, and in today's day of social media, where
(06:25):
they're gonna get beat up. Fifteen year olds are getting
criticized on social media because they had a bad day
on the field or on the court, and fifteen year
olds read their social media. I'm lucky I'm at that
age right now where I don't read my social media.
I might use social media, but I don't read my
social media. Young kids read their social media. So now
(06:45):
they're getting beat up by all kinds of different people
over the same thing. And that's not fair to young
kids because they're not mentally in a place to manage that.
I'm gonna shift a little gear, Sycus. That's a great point,
because does the parent just have to be a parent?
Parents get confused because they say, well, the coach doesn't
know what the hell they're doing. One thing I see
that gets lost. High school coaches I've literally heard tell
me it's hard to coach nowadays because you're afraid you're
(07:09):
gonna get fired. You know, if you if you coach
the kid, you know, if you if the kid sits
the bench, Sure, whatever the case is. But at the
same time I hear from every college coach I talked
to one of the most sought after characteristics is competition.
Kids that love to compete, compete to win. How do
you push without being overbearing? Right? Coaching is probably the
(07:29):
one profession that everyone that doesn't coach has better opinions
and better thoughts than the people that do coach. You
don't shoot around reading about people that are CEOs of
corporations and everyone's saying they don't know what they're doing,
they should have made the decision better. But in coaching,
that's the one profession that everyone feels that they have
a better answer on how to do things. And that's okay,
(07:50):
I mean, it is what it is. It's a difficult,
difficult time right now to be a disciplinarian. Heck, as
a parent, you gotta be careful. As a disc splinary,
I've always been a big believer of this. You better
have personal relationships with your players. This is not something
that I started now because times have changed. You've got
to have personal relationship with your players. They have to
(08:12):
know that you're committed to helping them above and beyond
the game of basketball. And when you do that, and
they're more receptive to allowing you to be more I
don't want to say aggressive, that's not the right word,
but holding them accountable at a higher level. The one
thing that I've never had time for is you cannot
make it personal and negative towards a player. I don't
(08:34):
believe in that. I say it all the time. I'm
really loud, but I'm really positive. I might yell a lot,
but I don't degrade people. And that's the one thing
that as long as you don't cross that line where
you're creating a negative atmosphere in your relationship with a
player or a negative atmosphere with the words that you
use because you're degrading a player, I think everything is
(08:54):
gonna be okay. But with that said, in our sport
and basketball, over the last four years, there are over
eight hundred and fifty transfers a year in Division one basketball,
and that is a direct correlation to what you just explained.
Parents not allowing coaches at the high school level to
coach their kids, and as soon as the coach tries
to coach their kids. They either try to get the
(09:15):
coach fired or they pull their kid and transfer them
to a different school where they don't hold them as accountable.
So they get to college and they're gonna be held accountable.
And when they're not comfortable in that world, they do
what they learn in high school. They get up and
run from it. And that's unfortunate because young kids don't
want to run away from problems, but if you allow
them to at a young age, they're going to become
adults that run away from problems. And that's the one
(09:38):
problem that we do have in society through sports in
today's day and age. The word adversity comes to mind.
From my vantage point, I look back and I didn't
recognize that when I was seventeen years old going through
those tough times. But then you fall back on things
as an adult, least for me, I'm thirty five years old.
I'm thinking about, Wow, I've been here before in different setting,
back in my college days or whatever. The terms helicopter
(09:58):
parents and snowplowed parents were paring the path for the
child as opposed to preparing the child for the path.
How important is it to allow the kids experience and
learn to work through adversity through their sport. I'm gonna
use an example doesn't involve sports. As a former mathematics teacher,
I had kids that came to class every day, They
did every homework assignment, They tried their rear ends off.
(10:20):
They were polite, they were respectful, they cared. They took
a test, they got a sixty on it. I didn't say,
you know what, they did all their work. They're a
nice kid. Let me give him a beast. No, they
gotta They gott a mask. And what happens is dealing
with failure. That's dealing with something didn't go right. So
now it's my job not to make it easy on
(10:41):
them by giving them a nice grade, by get them
the grade they deserve, but then helping him understand so
they can figure out what did they do wrong because
they put in all the effort, but something wasn't done
the right way, so they didn't have success on that test.
It's my job as a teacher that make them deal
with failure, but make them understand and how to grow
from failure. And I believe that's huge from a teaching standpoint.
(11:05):
That's what I do in coaching, and it's what I
do as a parent. It's the way I handle it.
I told my son all the time, I said, it's
not my job to prevent you from failing. It's my
job to help teach you how to stand up when
you fail. And it's what I tell my children, it's
what I tell my players, and it's the way I
handle the classroom. Some of us have been down a
certain road and we don't want our children to go
(11:25):
through that road. And there's nothing worse and watching a
young person cry because they don't think they're good enough.
But we're failing them. If we do the job for them,
we're failing them. If we blind them or home away
from adversity. We have to make them deal with it,
and then as an adult, helped teach them how to
get up, how to dust themselves off, and how to
(11:48):
go at it differently. It's better prepared so they can
have success. And I think that's the biggest difference in
today's day and age compared to how it used to be.
That's Frank Martin, University of South Carolina men's basketball head coach.
After the break, Coach Martin and I will talk about
adversity and teaching kids how to deal with failure. I'm
Nick Boncourt and you're listening to the Reform Sports Project podcast.
(12:16):
Welcome back to the Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonecourt,
and today we have Frank Martin men's basketball head coach
at the University of South Carolina. Where we left off,
we were discussing the importance of structure and preparing athletes
for the opportunity to be successful. Nowadays, you're paying the play.
So if I'm a parent, which i am, and there's
(12:37):
many that are, you're paying thousands of dollars coach for
a sports season that used to be kind of like
fifty bucks, you know whatever, and you're paying thousands of dollars.
So you want to return on that investment. So what
return on an investment is, Well, we gotta chase trophies, right,
we gotta win. If I'm paying this money, I better
be seeing my kid win and it better be setting
it up to get a scholarship down the road. So
it's almost like this whole mantra of we're always living
(12:59):
for in the home at trophies and this is building
up to a scholarship down to talk about win it
all costs and the difference at least what you think
of win it all costs, because I think there's a
difference at every level, but college livelihoods and professional are
paid to win, right, but not so much at nine,
ten eleven. Keep talking a little bit about win it
all costs and the differences of the youth and college
(13:20):
and professional level. You just said one of the biggest
problems we have. It's been new to basketball. Used to
be like one AU team maybe two per state. They
had tryouts, you made the team, you didn't make the team.
You didn't make the team, pretty much done. You went
back and just worked on your game all summer your
high school, or you went out and played baseball or whatever.
Now there's seven AU team for every neighborhood, so they've
(13:43):
got to have enough people to play. So then parents
are paying all this money for their child to be
on the team. Well, if you hit rewind And I'm
not saying the way it used to be is better
and this way is wrong. I'm just comparing. We grew
up playing at the park, Well, the park is free.
Now if you're are it, shows up at the park
to complain because they didn't let you play, or you
(14:04):
only played one game previous weekend or whatever it may be.
They're not going to disrespect your parents, but your parents
are gonna leave. Next time you show up at the park,
someone's will whoop your rear in, or you're never or
you're never gonna be allowed to play again. Being a
cry baby and not standing up and owning up to
your responsibilities now, because parents pay all this money, and
(14:24):
then not only do they pay money for their child
to be on a team, but then they have to
spend their money so they can travel to go support
their children. And it's not just one weekend, it's every weekend. Now.
Parents are invested, and if you're gonna ask them to
be given all this money, it's hard as a person
that runs the club to then tell them that they
got to sit down and their opinions don't need to
be heard. I pay money for my children to play
(14:47):
in club teams, but I've lived the life of a coach,
so I go sit in a corner. I don't say
a work. As long as my kids are being treated
fairly and equally, I don't say a word. And when
I do have to say something, it's a conversation between
me and the coach or me and the club person privately.
It's not something out in front of everybody. And that's
the slippery slope that you're asking. Like high school teams.
(15:09):
Parents don't fund high school teams. The school does, so
it's easier to manage the parents because they're not financially invested.
When you're asking parents to give you all this money
so and you can travel. And those parents want those
kids to play, and when they don't play, they're gonna
be mad. And my frustration is that when the parents
being upset, it's how they manage that moment when they
get upset. You can't be negative about other adults in
(15:32):
front of children, and unfortunately, we've created an atmosphere in
youth sports where parents are always critical of coaches and referees,
the other adults on the court in front of the children.
That creates confusion for a child. That creates a moment
where now the child child don't understand the monetary component,
but the child doesn't understand, well, my mom my dad
(15:53):
thinks this adult over is, I don't know what he's doing,
so I get to be critical too, and it creates
that problem for young people. There are a lot of kids,
a lot of parents that are listen to us, that
are trying, they're working hard, they listen. I firmly believe
all of us as parents, we genuinely want and I
think there's a lot of people that just misinformed. They
don't know, they don't have the experience, and they're seeking it,
so they'll listen to this looking for tips, and their
(16:14):
kids want to be college athletes. They're doing they're trying
to do the right things. The parents support the kid
allow them to fail. How can kids come play in
the SEC? How can they come play for South Carolina
and then forget they're not good enough, they're not talent
enough to play at that level. How about just becoming
a college athlete? A student athlete at the college level.
What's the best way to do it. I'll start with
this one because this one's always fun to me. You
(16:35):
start recruiting a young person and the parents say to you, well,
I really don't care about athletics. I'm all about academics.
Talk to me about the academics at your school. Well,
when I see the kids transcripts, it doesn't appear that
the parents very involved in the academics at the high school. Level.
So that was always that line always find interesting. So
I say that because first and foremost young people need
(16:57):
to have discipline and everything that they do in order
to have success at the collegiate level. So you, as
a parent, better make sure that academically there is an
environmental structure of direction and guidance at the high school level.
And it can't be because of sports. It has to
be because of life. Then if once you take care
(17:17):
of that part, and then you add the part about sports,
because because here's the deal. Playing sports is a privilege.
It's not a given, it's not a right. And if
you want people to understand it that way, then you
better make them earn their way on the court. What
I do with my children as I make them to
school work, I gotta make sure a do school work
and that teaches them work ethic, attention to detail, focus,
(17:38):
working to achieve something which is better grades and then
obviously that creates knowledge and then that gives them the
privilege of playing the sport. Secondly, when it comes to
playing the sport, you can't make it happen. There's no
magic Wand I tell kids all the time and their
parents and are recruited, I hear people say all the
time we make pros. Let me tell you something. I've
(17:59):
been doing this dirty five years and I've coached guys
that have played seventeen years in the NBA that I
am as close to as any other human being in
the world. If I had a magic formula to make
a probe, my guys will be in the NBA right now. Unfortunately,
that's not the way it works. I can't make it happen.
All I can do is teach and prepare them for
(18:21):
the day they get an opportunity they can succeed. And
it's the same way I spent sixteen years as a
high school coach. I can't guarantee those players scholarships. There's
nothing I can do that guarantees them scholarships. All they
can do is work their tails off and be a
good team. May be a good student. That way, Whenever
somebody at the collegiate level shows interest in that young person,
(18:44):
I can convince them as a coach that they're about
all the right things. They have a work ethic, look
at their grades academically, They're gonna do what they're supposed
to do. They don't get in trouble off the court,
so they're gonna protect you in your community. Then lastly,
look how much better this young person has gotten every
you're in high school, so guess well, when he gets
to your campus, he's gonna keep getting better. That means
he's gonna help you win games. And parents, sometimes they
(19:07):
want to put the cart in front of the horse,
and there's no shortcut. I heard someone say to the the
other day, I'm gonna use professional basketball, but it's the
same for all the professional sports. That's an exclusive club.
Not everyone is allowed in that club. It's not just
how how you can jump or how fast you can
run to get you into the club. There's a lot
of things you need, and God's blessing comes first and foremost.
(19:30):
But that club is not for everybody, and eventually we're
all gonna have to understand and deal with that one.
But that's what I would say. Just make sure that
your child is accepting coaching, accepting discipline, accepting growth. Let
it happen. Here's something I love listening. I'm not a
great reader. I read, but I'm more of a listener.
So when people speak, I really pay attention. And I
(19:51):
was driving in my car middle of the season last year.
Now I was frustrated because we're a really young team
and we weren't playing as well as I needed to play.
There's a motivational speaker in a radio station and he said,
always remember this. I have no idea why this guy
said this on this day, but it helped me and
I used it for my team. I allowed me to
coaching better. He said, whenever you're trying to get a
(20:13):
rose to bloom, you can't make it bloom bigger or
faster than it's destined to bloom. All you can do
is keep putting water on it and allow it to
bloom at its own rate into its own size. The
same way we're coaching young it's the same way we're
raising kids and coaching kids. You can't make them grow
any bigger or any faster than they're destined to be.
(20:35):
All you can do is keep feeding them, education, feeding them,
and feeding them, and allow them to grow at your
own rate. Coach Martin, that was awesome. I cannot thank
you enough. Frank Martin, South Carolina game comp man. I
probably couldn't bention pounds, but I want to go throw
and try to put it up there and they'll probably die.
But you got me you got me fire fired up. Coach.
Thank you so much for your time. I'm truly humbled.
(20:55):
Keep going what you're doing. Man. We all need to
learn and the only way we learn is by folks
like you putting certain things out there for everyone to
listen and learn from. And a lot of respect. Grateful
for your coach, Keep up the great work man. Really
appreciate you, sir An. Thanks to Frank Martin, University of
South Carolina men's basketball head coach for joining me on
the Reform Sports Project podcast. Thanks for listening to the
(21:17):
Reform Sports Project podcast. I'm Nick Bonacourt and our goal
is to restore healthy, balance and perspective in all areas
of sport through education and advocacy. For updates, please follow
us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, or check out our
website by searching for the Reform Sports Project
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