Coach Stephen Francis (second from right, standing) poses for the camera with executive members and a few senior athletes from the MVP track and field club. Others from left (standing) are David Noel, club secretary; Michael Frater, sprinter; Bruce James, club president; Paul Francis (younger brother of Stephen), assistant coach and club treasurer. Seated from left: Brigitte Foster, 100m hurdles national record holder; Asafa Powell, 100m world record holder; and Sherone Simpson, Olympic sprint relay gold medalist. (Photos: Bryan Cummings)

Overweight and with a liking for long, deep drags on a cigarette in his spare moments, Stephen Francis would hardly be picked out of a crowd by the uninformed and identified as Jamaica's leading track and field coach.
But it takes only a short chat to realise that the man who has guided new 100-metre world record holder Asafa Powell and others to the top, not only loves track and field, he is up to his ears in it.

More than that, Francis, with a Master's in Business Administration from the University of Michigan, has an unshakeable belief in the correctness of his own coaching philosophy and in his ability to get athletes to achieve their potential.

FRANCIS... the most important ingredient I want to see in a youngster is hunger for success

In a real sense, it was his 'feel' for what he considered to be the right thing for young athletes that caused him to drift away from high school coaching in the 1990s.

It gradually dawned on him while coaching at Wolmer's - his alma mater - that he would never win high school athletic championships because he wasn't prepared to push Under-14s (class three) into the winners' enclosure at all costs. The overriding evidence, he pointed out, was that especially at Boys' Champs, schools needed a strong class three to have a real shot at winning.

"I think I realised from about '94/95 that my coaching philosophies and my situation ... was going to make it extremely difficult for Wolmer's to win Champs," he told Sporting World.

JOHNSON... agreed to employ Francis at UTech

"There were some philosophies, some things which were required which I was never in agreement with. The key thing was the class three athletes, I never did believe in Under-14 people training too hard. My class three was always a very optional thing, if you wanted to come to train, fine. My key thing for class three athletes was always to get them interested in the sport and hopefully they would have a measure of success.

"I believed that the athlete at class two and class one was where the performance would serve them a lot better throughout life, so as a result my class three athletes were never able to compete really very well against the main school competitors unless they were extremely talented. So I realised early that unless I changed that philosophy I was not going to be able to win.

FOSTER... asked Francis in 1999 to guide her

"But what I was trying to do was to produce athletes of a high quality... Therefore once we began producing more and more quality older juniors then it became easy to be attracted to pushing it a little further..."

It was easy then for him when Brigitte Foster, now the national record holder for the 100m hurdles, approached him in '99 to guide her.

SIMPSON... a star for MVP

He recalls that he wasn't Foster's first choice. But the latter's 'first choice' failed on a number of occasions to honour his commitment to meet her and the frustrated athlete, intent on bucking the trend and pursuing a track career in Jamaica instead of the United States or Europe, turned to Francis.

"... Almost at the same time, Neil Gardner (hurdler) who had been here training with Mr Fitz Coleman at Wolmer's decided that he was going to switch back to me who was his coach in high school, and Donovan Housen (sprinter) ... had some immigration problems in the US and couldn't go back to school ... so almost at one shot I had three athletes who were seniors to coach..," said Francis.

It was an opportunity too good to be missed, and one thing led to another.

"I decided, 'Look, if I am going to do this thing I have to do it on a full-time basis'; I was fooling myself and fooling them (athletes) if I believed that I could do it part-time and for them to be successful..." he said. Francis also recognised the need for a "wider base" for athletes and for them to have an educational option.

So he approached Dennis Johnson, Olympian and 100-yard record holder of the early 1960s who directs the sports programme at UTech and asked to become his assistant.

Johnson said "yes" and all of a sudden Francis and his athletes had "access" to the facilities at UTech plus their options for boarding and accommodation.

"That is pretty much how it started, almost by accident," he now says of the genesis of the UTech-based MVP track club.

Accident? Perhaps it was a little accidental, but Francis also says he had long wondered about the reasons for local coaches not pushing on, after achieving excellence at the junior level. Why, he wondered, should it be a must for talented Jamaican athletes to be 'finished' in US colleges?

"I used to talk to coaches back in the 90s and I used to always wonder 'But why? if we can do this at the junior level why can't we also do it at the senior level...?'

"I was always told that such a programme required millions of dollars and so on..."

But, says Francis, "My philosophy has always been that not everything requires an ideal start. The thing to do would be to try first with whatever minimal resources you have and then see if you can make a success of it at the start and then it can attract funding ...,"

In building the track club to what it is now, Francis found that attracting funding, be it from government or private sources, was the hardest part.

Indeed, as the success of his athletes multiplied their earnings became the source of the money for equipping the MVP track club and its resource base.

"We generate money from what the athletes earn... we now have a strength coach, two masseurs, a chef, an administrator...," he says with pride.

And while he believes coaches make too much of an issue of "modern facilities" he confesses that he would now find it difficult to operate outside of the well-stocked UTech gym - much of the equipment provided by MVP.

"I will say that I would not be operating as a coach outside of UTech because a lot of the things that we have are just not available to the other coaches and so I couldn't imagine coaching without them. So I would imagine that it would be a great stumbling block to other coaches who want to emulate what MVP has done...," Francis said.

Looking back Francis insists that all that has been achieved would have been impossible had track and field not shed the amateurism that had held it back for decades.

"Certainly ... if it wasn't possible to earn from the sport, my programme could not exist," he says categorically. "The support base would just not be there. To compete at the highest level, the athlete needs a full-time coach ... who is going to pay this coach? How is this coach going to take care of himself and his dependents and so on if he is not paid?

"Also, the coach you need is not somebody who is in his 20s or probably even early 30s. What you need is somebody who has had a large amount of experience at the sport. That person has to be paid. The government doesn't pay coaches as far as I know. The federation doesn't pay coaches, nor does the Olympic Association, so the coach has to be able to earn money. The athletes need a basic level of support if they are going to be able to move from whatever level they are as teenagers to a world-class level.

"There is a whole lot of equipment required which has to come from somewhere.. Traditionally our schools, our tertiary schools, universities, colleges have not been interested in helping people whose inclination is sports ... in the same way they will want to help those who want to become doctors, lawyers etc. Sport has never been seen in Jamaica as a viable career.... (or as) a viable service industry ... This has been recognised throughout the world, but we have been slow in catching on ..." he said.

Francis claimed that for years UTech (previously CAST) had been the only tertiary institution (not counting GC Foster College) where students could get an education, while training in a meaningful way.

The problem was that UTech could only attract the rejects from US colleges at a time when it was very easy to get a scholarship to a US college.

All that, he noted, has now changed with the growing realisation that world-standard training can be accessed at home. That plus the fact of the growing 'professionalisation' of track and field combined with the now increasing difficulty of getting into US colleges.

And as he looks to make his track club even more sustainable, Francis is backing himself to be able to spot talent that will not only succeed on the track, but will fit comfortably in the embrace of the UTech campus with its mix of degree, diploma and certificate programmes.

He has his own formula - always hunting for the under-dog athlete, who often fails to achieve anything of note at high school championships. He notes that many of his top athletes, not least Powell, Foster and Olympic sprint gold medalist Sherone Simpson, "never won a race" at Champs.

"My programme involves spotting athletes, who I think will fit into the structure we have. I totally avoid those athletes with the biggest names. So I would not, for example, be recruiting a Usain Bolt or Anneisha McLaughlin...

"I believe that the most important ingredient I want to see in a youngster is hunger for success. I believe that when you have achieved a lot of success very early, then it is possible that the hunger for that success is not going to be as strong as somebody who has constantly been beaten by you over the years.

"Now I can't afford to ask somebody to come to school at UTech, in most cases foregoing a track scholarship and so on and have them fail. The people I take ... have to be guaranteed 100 per cent success or else you going to say 'Boy, this person could have done this or that', so I have to make sure that the person gets his education and I have to make sure that the person benefits a lot.

"So first is the selection process. And the selection process is geared towards the hidden gem ..."

Tastee Talent Trail finalists prepare for the big night

Are You Afraid Of Your Financial Future?

Good support in Bounty Hall for Heineken's 'Bond' road show