Marcus Mariota, the towering figure clutching a football and exhorting a message of dreaming big and working hard, steps out of the classroom bulletin board posters and comes to life for the students at Likelike Elementary School on Friday.
The Tennessee Titans’ quarterback, who is featured in the omnipresent Island Insurance/Hawaii State Teachers Association placards, will bring more than inspiration with him when he speaks to the summer school students in a morning assembly at the cafeteria.
While he shares his story with the students, many of whom come from immigrant or single-parent families, he also will distribute some of the results of that growing success. Through his Motiv8 Foundation, Mariota will hand out Nike backpacks filled with school supplies (including composition books, pencil cases, crayons, pencils, pens, erasers, markers, portfolios, scissors, etc.) to approximately 60 first through fifth grade students at the 95-year-old Palama Street school.
Characteristically, it is part of a mission that Mariota has largely gone about quietly but passionately.
For example, Wednesday at Kapolei and Pearl City Highlands he was booked for personal appearances at Walmart stores. Today at 3 p.m. it is the Keeaumoku Street Walmart. Monday he shoots an Island Insurance TV commercial. Some of the proceeds of his two year-old NFL career go to helping fund a foundation that was already on the drawing board before he cashed his first NFL paycheck.
“It was something that we wanted to do and talked about before I left college (for the 2015 NFL Draft),” said the 2014 Heisman Trophy winner.
Event planning
Earlier this year he hosted a golf tournament fundraiser and is planning a fall event for about 1,000 students.
“The goal of the foundation is to provide help for underprivileged youth,” Mariota said. “When I was growing up I was very fortunate to have my parents there for me throughout and we want to give back in that same vein. I want to be that force that my parents were for me for kids. I hope and pray that through my career that I get to continue the foundation and find ways to give back and build a legacy of Motiv8 and help sustain it for a very long time.”
Creating a foundation that touches communities he is involved in was so important to to him that, in typical Mariota thoroughness, he scouted the landscape and took notes. “He went to some of Shane Victorino’s events — they have become good friends — and studied what the Victorino Foundation was doing,” said insurance executive Keith Amemiya, who sits on the boards of both groups.
“Along with Shane, I think there are a lot of people who find unique ways to give back,” Mariota said. “Some of my teammates in Nashville — where DeMarco (Murray) is doing football camps, or Ben Jones, our center, does a clay shootout — there are fun ways to raise money and bring awareness to your cause. Over the last few years I’ve been able to observe and take notes. I think for us, as a family and the team we have around (it), Motiv8 has kind of found its purpose. We’re going to find ways to give back and share with the community.”
In addition to his work here, Mariota also plans to take part in Eugene, Ore., where he served as a volunteer at the Boys and Girls Clubs as a University of Oregon student, and Nashville, Tenn., much as Victorino has done here, in Philadelphia and Las Vegas.
Meaning of message
In classes at Likelike, teacher Kris Nakaoka said they have talked about the message in the “dream big, work hard, make it happen” Mariota posters. “We talked about each line and what it means.”
It helps, Nakaoka said, that many of the children, especially the boys, know who Mariota is.
Like Mariota as an aspiring recess quarterback vowing an NFL career even back in the day at Nuuanu Elementary, “We have one first grader (to be) who wants to be a quarterback and at recess in summer school he tries to play quarterback with the fourth graders,” Nakaoka said. “He definitely knows who Marcus Mariota is.”
Come Friday, his schoolmates also will have reason to.
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
