MARINE CORPS AIR STATION IWAKUNI, Japan -- “Win the day. To me that sums up everything. Be a better person every day, become a better athlete every day.” This is the motto of Matthew C. Perry High School Former Head Football coach Frank A. Macias - a motto that he tells his players constantly. It doesn’t matter if the difference is 100% or 1%, any form of improvement for his students is a victory in Macias’ mind.
Frank Macias has been coaching at M.C. Perry High School since 2011. He was a former math teacher, as well as the head football and baseball coach of two programs, which he started.
M.C. Perry closed down the school’s football program in the early 2000s. Due to a lack of students interested in playing, they couldn't maintain the number of participants to keep the program going. Conveniently, when Macias transferred to Iwakuni in 2011, then principal Morgan Nugent decided to bring football back to the school, and Macias was the ideal man to make it happen. Macias was coaching at Mannheim High School in Germany from 2004 till 2011. He became a successful high school football coach and carried over his expertise to M.C. Perry High School and eventually became the head coach.
“In 2013, I had 63 players out of a school of 120. Over half the student population was playing football,” Macias says. “Then our first varsity year was 2014. We won the division in Japan, then we played in the championship our first varsity year and we lost 50 to 60. We have great kids here, these Marine kids, Navy kids, they’re hard workers.”
Macias gained a different perspective the more he coached the kids from the school. He maintained his competitive edge, and all the while, he grew to understand something far more important than being victorious in every game.
“When you first start coaching you just want to win, because it's all about winning,” Macias says. “Yeah, I won the championship, I won this, I won that, and as a young coach that's the most important thing, but once you start coaching you begin to realize, you know it's not about the winner of the game. It's about the kids and what you're teaching them.”
Macias realized he's here to help the kids become better people by teaching them the things that come from playing football, such as hard work, discipline, and of course, teamwork. These attributes they learn will help them transition into successful adults.
“It’s going to make them better people, and when you start seeing sports and football as an avenue to teach them those things, it takes on a much more gratifying role,” Macias says. "To me, when you say success, I think about the kids. To me, those are my successes. It's not the games, it's those kids.”
Throughout his career as a coach, he went from coaching 130 kids in the sport of football to being at M.C. Perry High School and having to go classroom to classroom asking kids if they would want to go play football during their school hours.
Macias doesn’t stop at the field when connecting with his players. Whether they are a current or former student, he goes out of his way to stay in contact with those he helped and watches as they complete their transition into valuable members of society.
“It's a challenge bringing them together, teaching them the values of life and helping them be successful,” Macias says. “For instance, a student who played for us is in Annapolis right now at the Navy Academy, so just seeing all these guys go on and do great things and that to me is the most gratifying thing.”
“There was a teacher whose son went through my program and she asked, ‘your son is going to go to High School? He needs to play football for Coach Macias. He's not just coaching football, he's raising and teaching these boys how to be men.’ ”
Macias is always coaching, however it’s not necessarily always about football, it’s about the student’s life paths, choices and wellbeing that are his main point of focus whenever he’s in public or on the football field, he still follows this philosophy to this day.
“Wins and losses come and go, but you know seeing them become good people, that’s what's important,” Macias says. "We just got great kids that work hard and continue to get better every single day. They're always on an upward trajectory which is something I want them to take off the field with them.”