Hello world!

I suppose a welcome of some sort is traditional in this space. It has taken me a good deal of time to start a blog. No known reason other than my self-made barriers. You see, it is very easy and natural for me to help others. I do it virtually every day of my life. It seems to me that in some small way, blogging is about self-promotion, and that my friends are something I am not very adept at doing. This will surprise many people who have known me for years and find my confidence distracting. I assure you, my friends, that the confidence is directed at helping others and not myself.

So this space will be used to talk about everything related to helping athletes and anyone else who cares to listen in. I hope to do it regularly, as I have finally been convinced that the only way to help others is to promote myself. I got hit by this revolutionary thunderbolt this afternoon when helping a friend get off his ass so that he promotes himself and the things he has to offer the world. It did strike me as hypocritical that I wouldn’t do the same for myself.

So here I go. If you start by reading my profile, you will learn a bit about who I am and a little about the work I have done. Be so good as to check in at my website (a work in progress). It will soon be WordPress as well. Friend me on Facebook, follow me on Twitter, and I will, of course, return the favor. After we have all become friends over the next few weeks, I will start telling you about the work I do, hopefully in entertaining stories. Rather than lecture about topics in sport psychology, I thought I would tell you about athletes (not necessarily by name) that I have spent time with, helping them pursue their goals. Most of them are very different, and each has a story to tell. I hope that by hearing their stories, I can convey to you where sport psychology and mental training fit into this pursuit of athletic achievement. Keep in mind it is not always about Gold Medals and rewards, it is more often about finding what is hiding. So that is the journey. It would be a great pleasure for me if you enjoyed the ride as we look for “The Athlete within You”.

Everything Needs a Beginning

I’ve been working with athletes on the game within the game for almost 35 years. I like to tell people that it means I started when I was 5. It is obvious to anyone who has seen a recent picture of me that this statement is a bald-faced lie. OK, I’ll admit to 13 then. If there is a point to this, Margolies, get on with it, would you?

I left the friendly confines of Humboldt State University with a degree in hand to pursue my Master's Degree in Sport Science under the supervision of one Marvin Clein. I had been given an assistantship solely based on my ability to teach foil fencing. This, of course, was a complete or almost complete fabrication. I had taken one quarter of fencing in college. The first thing my French-trained instructor had said in class was that in France, we wouldn’t touch a foil for 2 years. I’d had 3 months and was prepared to teach the course in college. This, of course, is the confidence of a 21-year-old soccer-playing, PE major.

I graduated in June, drove to Colorado to be a Park Ranger(this will be another chapter some day), and found my way to the ivy brick buildings of the University of Denver, 2 days before my program and teaching fencing began. I was directed to the department chair's office. He didn’t get up. He was on the phone. He said (it seemed to me curtly), I’m on the phone, talk to Bruce. Here I had driven all this way, and he was on the phone. At least I thought I had 10 minutes left before he started in on me on fencing.

While lost in this thought, I heard a voice. Bruce was communicating with me, and I was not very attentive. I apologized and paid attention. Bruce was an older man (keep in mind I was 21). He had white hair and a friendly smile. It’s funny now as I considered him old and he was in his 50s, whereas here I am now at 70. He asked how my trip had been and what I wanted to do with my life. Had I played sports in High School or college. That kind of simple introduction.

I told him I wanted to coach because almost every coach I’d ever had was not great and had gotten it all wrong. This included my soccer coach, whom I admired a great deal. He had failed in my year with him to turn me into a NASL player, so how good could he have been after all? My football coach at Los Angeles State University didn’t think I was worthy of starting as a freshman (it’s a secret, but the guy ahead of me was drafted into the NFL). My High School coaches were more concerned with the length of my hair… Basically, I was a pretty good athlete. At 6 feet tall, I could dunk a basketball at 16 years old, run a sub-4.5 sec 40-yard dash, and do pretty much anything I was asked to do playing sports, except stick with it. OH well, these are talks for another time. Let’s just say that I wanted to coach athletes and knew there was a better way, and I wanted to find it.

I had been rambling for a minute or two when I noticed Bruce was smiling. I assumed that he thought I was just another idiot college kid. I thought he was laughing at me. He said, from listening to me about my sports experiences, that I lacked self-confidence, a positive self-image, blamed others, etc. I said we hadn’t been introduced. He said his name was Bruce Ogilvie and he was a good friend of Marv’s. We talked for another half hour before Marv found his way off the phone. I had realized that I did know Bruce. I had read about him in textbooks and Sports Illustrated. He was the modern father of Sports Psychology. I was pretty much in awe, but Bruce drew me out. We talked about athletes he had worked with and the Olympics. It was very cool.

While we had been chatting away like a couple of teenagers, he noticed first that now Marv was smiling. I figured that grumpy Marv was about to give me something to think about, like which direction to take back to California. Instead, he said to Bruce, it was time for lunch. He got up and walked to the door with his old friend, leaving me standing (I had gotten up, not knowing what to do). When he got to the door, he barked, “Margolies, you're driving, and flipped me the keys”. It was an odd way to start on this 50-year journey working with athletes.