SYP brings Coach Pain to Saipan to motivate students

Motivational speaker Dewayne “Coach Pain” Montgomery with Saipan Southern High School senior students and the Saipan Young Professionals after his mini-session at the school yesterday. (IVA MAURIN)

Dewayne Montgomery, better known as Coach Pain, is on island for a series of motivational speaking events on emotional and mental wellness for the NMI youth.

The series is part of the Saipan Young Professionals’ outreach campaign to local public high schools to provide a fresh perspective on an emotional and/or mental level, to help students make professional and personal changes in their daily lives and within themselves.

Montgomery talked about really living and finding purpose, overcoming pain, and individual strength.

“Be passionate about your lives. There are no obstacles greater than you. Look yourself in the mirror and say if it’s meant to be, it’s up to me. Every morning, wake up with that attitude. Carry the positive, not the negative,” Montgomery said, addressing the senior students yesterday at Saipan Southern High School

“Your strength is important. What you carry inside is so important and so impactful in people’s lives. People are depending on you. Ten years from now, somebody will be waiting on you to help them,” he added.

SSHS principal Vince dela Cruz, recognizing that students go through unwanted stress from still recovering from the typhoon, from home issues, and in their personal relationships, hopes that through presentations such as Montgomery’s, the youth will get presented with strategies on how to better deal with the anxiety and stress that goes with such situations.

Dela Cruz believes that the students, even though they are good kids, need a lot of support and guidance on how to go through the daily lives and how to deal with stress.

“They are students but they are also humans,” dela Cruz said. “And just like us, they go through stress. As adults, we have [already] experienced it out there so we know how to go through it. But the students here don’t.”

Senior student Nehemia Fernandez said after the talk, they [students] started talking to each other a little bit about what they are going through, and that they got inspired to continue moving forward and take on challenges.

“As teenagers nowadays, especially on this island and after what we’ve gone through, there are people who are still too down and out,” Fernandez said. “They need some motivation, some more support from people like Montgomery, and with him there, it’s going to help a student, not only maybe emotionally and mentally, but also physically.”

Aside from Saipan Southern High School, Coach Pain, through the Saipan Young Professionals, also went to Marianas High School and Kagman High School.

Motivational speaker Dewayne “Coach Pain” Montgomery inspiring students at Saipan Southern High School to “really live,” move beyond obstacles, and find their purpose. Coach Pain is here on the island for the first time as part of Saipan Young Professionals’ youth outreach on mental wellness. (IVA MAURIN)