At 15, I walked away from the sport I loved. Not because I did not care. I was burned out, empty, and could not explain why. I could not muster the motivation to show up to training, let alone compete. What I know now is that my motivation drivers had been running on empty for a long time, and nobody around me, including me, had the language to identify it.
I found my way back, eventually playing collegiately at UNC-CH and then professionally for 12 years with the Chicago Fire FC. But not every athlete does. That’s what keeps me up at night.
Motivation Is Not a Switch
After years as a player, coach, and sport parent, here’s what I’ve come to understand: motivation is not something athletes have or do not have. It’s not a character trait. It’s a specific combination of internal drivers unique to each athlete, and when those drivers go unmet, no amount of encouragement, pressure, or extra reps fills the gap.
We call this Motivation Intelligence. Every athlete is fueled by six core drivers:
Value: The need to feel their specific contributions are seen and recognized.
Stability: The need for trust, clarity, and consistent expectations.
Purpose: The need to know their role connects to something larger than the scoreboard.
Connection: The need for teammates and coaches who feel like genuine partners.
Achievement: Energized by measurable growth and visible development.
Alignment: The need to believe in the team’s direction and culture before fully committing.
Every athlete has all six. What separates them is the order and intensity of each one: their motivational fingerprint.
What This Means for Coaches and Parents
A Value-driven athlete who works hard, leads the culture, and shows up for everyone but never hears her coach specifically acknowledge what she brings will quietly lose her fuel. It will not show up in her stats right away. It will show up in her energy, her investment, and eventually her commitment to the program.
A Stability-driven player who walks into a season with unclear expectations, inconsistent feedback, or a coach whose standards shift week to week will spend more mental energy managing anxiety than playing freely. Create certainty for this athlete with clear roles, consistent communication, and fair expectations, and watch what they are capable of.
A Purpose-driven athlete who cannot connect what she is doing in the gym to something larger than a win-loss record will slowly disengage. She needs to know that her effort means something to the team, to the community, to the future. Give her that context, and she becomes one of the most committed athletes in the building.
A Connection-driven athlete who loses her sense of belonging on a new club team will not perform at her best, no matter how talented she is. The relationships in that gym matter more to her than the scoreboard. When those feel genuine, she will run through a wall for her teammates and coaches.
An Achievement-driven player who is not seeing measurable growth will disengage quietly, and nobody in the gym will understand why. She needs to feel the progress. Tracking development, celebrating improvement, and giving her standards to chase are what keep her engine running.
An Alignment-driven athlete who does not believe in the direction the program is heading, the culture, the values, or the way things are done will hold something back even if she cannot articulate why. She needs to buy into the how, not just the what. When she does, her commitment is nearly unbreakable.
The question is not: how motivated is your athlete?
The question is: does anyone in their corner, including them, actually understand what moves them?
One of the most powerful things I hear from parents who go through this process is that it gives them language. Not just to understand their child’s performance, but to support them in a way that actually meets their needs, on and off the court.
The Unlock
COLEAD’s Athlete Motivation Profile (AMP) takes 10 minutes and surfaces the specific drivers shaping each athlete’s engagement, performance, and resilience. Athletes get language for something they’ve always felt but never been able to name. Coaches get an individualized lens for every player in the gym. Parents learn what their child actually needs from the sport.
When everyone in an athlete’s corner speaks the same language, the culture shifts. Not because of a new system or a new play. Because the people who care most finally understand what moves them.
JVA community offer: Take the Athlete Motivation Profile and use code JVA15OFF at checkout for 15% off, exclusively for the JVA community.
Logan Pause is a former MLS player and captain of the Chicago Fire and Co-Founder & CEO of COLEAD, a Motivation Intelligence platform for youth sport.
