Motivating Today’s Young Athletes Handout

• Murphy (1995) defines transferable skills as “skills learned in one area that can be used in another.”

The Jonathan Bender example:

• In 1999, Bender came out of Picayune Memorial High School in Picayune, Mississippi as a highly touted and promising 7’0’’ player.
• By 2006, at the age of 26, Jonathan Bender was forced to prematurely retire.
• At this point in his life he had no college degree to fall back on.
• As of 2010, Jonathan Bender has done quite nicely for himself.  He is the proud owner of several investments including a record label, an island in the Caribbean, an Italian wine company, several real estate holdings, a real estate development and property based management firm, as well as a charitable organization aptly called The Jonathan Bender Foundation that focuses on the youth in Southern Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast areas.

Intrinsic Motivation versus Extrinsic Motivation

• Intrinsic motivation is defined as “striving inwardly to be competent at something and to reward yourself inwardly.” (www.psychologycampus.com)
• While Bainbridge (2011) describes extrinsic motivation as “that which comes from outside an individual.”  The author adds that these external rewards usually “provide satisfaction and pleasure that the task itself may not provide.”