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I recall going to UTECH for the first in a long while in 2003 to train on the back field where I heard an IAAF-recognized "high performance center" had been established.
Didn't know what to expect but was shocked to discover the high performance center was the same old CAST goat pasture of a field from back in the day (maybe a little more grass) devoid completely of any modernity.
'Twas a pleasure however jogging not with but in the company of Afaster and especially Sherone and Brigitte - inspirational.
First world athletics, third world funding at UTech
Ross Sheil, Online Co-ordinator rsheil@jamaicaobserver.com
Saturday, March 29, 2008
UTech track athletes going through their drills including Asafa Powell (at centre in white shirt), watched by coach Stephen Francis (seated on wall second from left)
Early morning on a grass field in St Andrew a pair of 19-year-old athletes are completing a drill. They are hopping off a box, over a hurdle and then back onto another box.
It's a pretty mundane scene.
"You in the white shirt!" yells a coach during another session nearby. Yet the white shirt lolling on the low wall is Asafa Powell, aka the world's fastest man, while yelling coach Stephen Francis is equally accomplished in his own field.
With its relatively modest facilities, and its presence in Jamaican sports seemingly taken for granted, the University of Technology (UTech) can be forgiven for blowing its trumpet as the 'Home of World Class Athletes' - underfunded director of sports Anthony Davis knows his needs too.
"Our success is overlooked in a large way because Jamaica has a culture of high school sports, so Champs and Manning Cup is a big thing, so people who are fanatical about high school forget that you are going to graduate some day and when they come here you are struggling to get support for those same athletes!" implored Davis.
Trophies showing some of the other sports offered by UTech including taekwon do, football and table tennis
Planning to promote itself more aggressively via athletics, the university still needs to attract more corporate support, which is apparent when visiting the UTech sports facilities. The track athletes, and certainly the professionals like Powell and Sherone Simpson from Francis' UTech-based MVP Track Club, have access to all the latest Nike kits, while the less fortunate field team relies on what's left over when the sports manufacturer delivers.
As Davis points out, the strength of high school sports has distracted eyes, and likely funding, from UTech while many of those top athletes instead opt for scholarships in the United States.
Facing those hurdles it's just as well that when Dennis Johnson, a former 100 yards world record-holder, introduced athletics to UTech (then known as CAST), in 1970 he did so with a very different philosophy, influenced by his time studying for a degree in Physical Education at San José State University in the United States where he was trained by the great sprint coach, Lloyd 'Bud' Winter.
"He came back to Jamaica anxious to implement this thing and prove this theory and develop people to national standard here in Jamaica and actually teach people to sprint," said Davis of Johnson.
"His approach was to adapt ordinary people and he chose non-high school stars because if you need to prove something you can't use a Usain Bolt! And the place where you would find a collection of these people was CAST."
Davis himself was the first point to be proved by Johnson when he became the first UTech athlete to represent Jamaica when he competed in the 1974 Central American and Caribbean Games. Yet as a schoolboy he not once represented Kingston College, almost like Powell who only emerged as a dominant 100 metres runner at UTech (brother Donovan reached the Olympics in the same event).
The brave approach of Johnson survives at UTech in the methods of head coach Francis, who takes a long-term view to athletic development.
A successful coach at Wolmer's, he took the team from 10th to second place at Champs, but decided to step down after realising that his methods were costing the title. That is, he refused to push the youngest under-14 athletes, believing they needed to be protected from burnout.
Francis and UTech have total faith in their methods, after all argues Davis, the results speak for themselves. Their athletes made up 20 per cent of Jamaica's delegation at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, where they contributed 50 per cent of the country's medal tally.
"We are saying that you don't need to send students away when they can stay, invest and we can develop them," he reasoned. "There still is a stigma, even though we are successful, people still believe they need to send their sons and daughters to the US, but when they come back they can't make the team because our students are making up the team."
Corporate sponsorship is not entirely lacking with Guardian Life assisting with nutrition, but other needs such as eye and dental care still have to be more adequately met.
The private sector provides just three of the 140 sports scholarships shared among the 250 students on the UTech sports programme, 40 of whom are athletes.
GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of the Powell-endorsed Lucozade energy drink, has provided two athletics scholarships with another, tennis, provided by Cable & Wireless - a reminder that Johnson developed his programme not just for athletics, but sports in general.
"His idea was that you build one sport and show what can be done and then you move into other sports," explained Davis. "We have evolved from an essentially track and field programme to a complete sports programme."
He is in dialogue with local sports associations, including netball and football, in an effort to enroll their players at UTech.
All students who join the UTech sports programme must first sign a contract guaranteeing that they maintain a minimum GPA of 2.0 - this also serves to expose them to the professional attitudes that will be demanded of them should they make it their career.
Sports teams are also assigned a student manager, who works no more than 12 hours per week, so as not to affect their studies, responsible for duties that would otherwise be assigned to staff members. Managers also learn first aid while all students receive basic courses in subjects like health and nutrition and even media relations.
College athletes from other countries have also been allowed to train at UTech in an exchange programme, which Davis hopes can be extended to coaches in different sports.
A qualified accountant, Francis never competed as an athlete, but is an obsessive reader of athletic research and his coaching methods have attracted worldwide interest.
"Several people from Japan, Germany and other European countries like the US have come here and seen what we have and it's nothing what they are accustomed to, but in our context it's pretty good. We try to use our resources in the best way possible, which doesn't necessarily mean top-of-the-line physical stuff," said Francis.
Francis himself made significant sacrifices, quitting his job to coach 100-metre hurdler Brigitte Foster-Hylton full-time, but on a voluntary basis using UTech's facilities until they offered him a paid position.
That victory won, the still unimpressed Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA) later demanded of Powell that he drop Francis as his coach or forgo its support.
International sports don't throw up stories much more underdog than UTech athletics. A key element in UTech's winning formula, believe Davis and Francis, comes from the motivation of not having much, a delicate balance that an influx of millions, or billions, might upset.
Student athletes who daily see the likes of Powell still training, still sharing the same facilities, still being yelled at by his coach, are perhaps less likely to develop ego problems.
While eating bread and tea for breakfast is likely to keep an athlete hungry for success, pampering and overeating will not, reasons throwing coach Linval Swaby.
But then, as Swaby reprimands a young athlete caught resting on a hurdle costing US$150, somebody has to pay for it.
Didn't know what to expect but was shocked to discover the high performance center was the same old CAST goat pasture of a field from back in the day (maybe a little more grass) devoid completely of any modernity.
'Twas a pleasure however jogging not with but in the company of Afaster and especially Sherone and Brigitte - inspirational.
First world athletics, third world funding at UTech
Ross Sheil, Online Co-ordinator rsheil@jamaicaobserver.com
Saturday, March 29, 2008
UTech track athletes going through their drills including Asafa Powell (at centre in white shirt), watched by coach Stephen Francis (seated on wall second from left)
Early morning on a grass field in St Andrew a pair of 19-year-old athletes are completing a drill. They are hopping off a box, over a hurdle and then back onto another box.
It's a pretty mundane scene.
"You in the white shirt!" yells a coach during another session nearby. Yet the white shirt lolling on the low wall is Asafa Powell, aka the world's fastest man, while yelling coach Stephen Francis is equally accomplished in his own field.
With its relatively modest facilities, and its presence in Jamaican sports seemingly taken for granted, the University of Technology (UTech) can be forgiven for blowing its trumpet as the 'Home of World Class Athletes' - underfunded director of sports Anthony Davis knows his needs too.
"Our success is overlooked in a large way because Jamaica has a culture of high school sports, so Champs and Manning Cup is a big thing, so people who are fanatical about high school forget that you are going to graduate some day and when they come here you are struggling to get support for those same athletes!" implored Davis.
Trophies showing some of the other sports offered by UTech including taekwon do, football and table tennis
Planning to promote itself more aggressively via athletics, the university still needs to attract more corporate support, which is apparent when visiting the UTech sports facilities. The track athletes, and certainly the professionals like Powell and Sherone Simpson from Francis' UTech-based MVP Track Club, have access to all the latest Nike kits, while the less fortunate field team relies on what's left over when the sports manufacturer delivers.
As Davis points out, the strength of high school sports has distracted eyes, and likely funding, from UTech while many of those top athletes instead opt for scholarships in the United States.
Facing those hurdles it's just as well that when Dennis Johnson, a former 100 yards world record-holder, introduced athletics to UTech (then known as CAST), in 1970 he did so with a very different philosophy, influenced by his time studying for a degree in Physical Education at San José State University in the United States where he was trained by the great sprint coach, Lloyd 'Bud' Winter.
"He came back to Jamaica anxious to implement this thing and prove this theory and develop people to national standard here in Jamaica and actually teach people to sprint," said Davis of Johnson.
"His approach was to adapt ordinary people and he chose non-high school stars because if you need to prove something you can't use a Usain Bolt! And the place where you would find a collection of these people was CAST."
Davis himself was the first point to be proved by Johnson when he became the first UTech athlete to represent Jamaica when he competed in the 1974 Central American and Caribbean Games. Yet as a schoolboy he not once represented Kingston College, almost like Powell who only emerged as a dominant 100 metres runner at UTech (brother Donovan reached the Olympics in the same event).
The brave approach of Johnson survives at UTech in the methods of head coach Francis, who takes a long-term view to athletic development.
A successful coach at Wolmer's, he took the team from 10th to second place at Champs, but decided to step down after realising that his methods were costing the title. That is, he refused to push the youngest under-14 athletes, believing they needed to be protected from burnout.
Francis and UTech have total faith in their methods, after all argues Davis, the results speak for themselves. Their athletes made up 20 per cent of Jamaica's delegation at the 2007 World Championships in Osaka, Japan, where they contributed 50 per cent of the country's medal tally.
"We are saying that you don't need to send students away when they can stay, invest and we can develop them," he reasoned. "There still is a stigma, even though we are successful, people still believe they need to send their sons and daughters to the US, but when they come back they can't make the team because our students are making up the team."
Corporate sponsorship is not entirely lacking with Guardian Life assisting with nutrition, but other needs such as eye and dental care still have to be more adequately met.
The private sector provides just three of the 140 sports scholarships shared among the 250 students on the UTech sports programme, 40 of whom are athletes.
GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturer of the Powell-endorsed Lucozade energy drink, has provided two athletics scholarships with another, tennis, provided by Cable & Wireless - a reminder that Johnson developed his programme not just for athletics, but sports in general.
"His idea was that you build one sport and show what can be done and then you move into other sports," explained Davis. "We have evolved from an essentially track and field programme to a complete sports programme."
He is in dialogue with local sports associations, including netball and football, in an effort to enroll their players at UTech.
All students who join the UTech sports programme must first sign a contract guaranteeing that they maintain a minimum GPA of 2.0 - this also serves to expose them to the professional attitudes that will be demanded of them should they make it their career.
Sports teams are also assigned a student manager, who works no more than 12 hours per week, so as not to affect their studies, responsible for duties that would otherwise be assigned to staff members. Managers also learn first aid while all students receive basic courses in subjects like health and nutrition and even media relations.
College athletes from other countries have also been allowed to train at UTech in an exchange programme, which Davis hopes can be extended to coaches in different sports.
A qualified accountant, Francis never competed as an athlete, but is an obsessive reader of athletic research and his coaching methods have attracted worldwide interest.
"Several people from Japan, Germany and other European countries like the US have come here and seen what we have and it's nothing what they are accustomed to, but in our context it's pretty good. We try to use our resources in the best way possible, which doesn't necessarily mean top-of-the-line physical stuff," said Francis.
Francis himself made significant sacrifices, quitting his job to coach 100-metre hurdler Brigitte Foster-Hylton full-time, but on a voluntary basis using UTech's facilities until they offered him a paid position.
That victory won, the still unimpressed Jamaica Amateur Athletics Association (JAAA) later demanded of Powell that he drop Francis as his coach or forgo its support.
International sports don't throw up stories much more underdog than UTech athletics. A key element in UTech's winning formula, believe Davis and Francis, comes from the motivation of not having much, a delicate balance that an influx of millions, or billions, might upset.
Student athletes who daily see the likes of Powell still training, still sharing the same facilities, still being yelled at by his coach, are perhaps less likely to develop ego problems.
While eating bread and tea for breakfast is likely to keep an athlete hungry for success, pampering and overeating will not, reasons throwing coach Linval Swaby.
But then, as Swaby reprimands a young athlete caught resting on a hurdle costing US$150, somebody has to pay for it.
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