TEENage has seen it happen too many times, to not realise a pattern. Why do we, as Jamaicans, place so much importance on hiring foreign coaches?

Quite simply we have to ask, what makes a good coach? Can a foreign coach be more effective than a home-grown one?

A good coach, in TEENage’s estimation, requires technical knowledge, the ability to understand each player’s strengths and weaknesses and the know-how to find ways to build a winning unit on these strengths and weaknesses.

Undoubtedly, understanding another individual becomes easier if one belongs to the same culture and speaks the same language. Assuming a local coach has the same amount of technical expertise as a foreigner, wouldn’t the local do a much better job?

For all their good intentions, the Jamaica Football Federation and more recently the Jamaica Netball Association have fuelled a slowly building debate.

This is not a debate of competence, but rather whether or not we should take a local or foreign coach.

Over the years, through the developmental stages, Jamaican coaches have succeeded in preparing our sports teams for major championships. But there comes a time when we would love to improve in the international standing.

What do we do then? Do we send the coaches who have been working for years with the teams on training courses or do we employ a foreign coach?

Generally, the former is the rule of thumb. But at TEENage, we feel this only a quick patch that will inevitably break away.

In the cases where local coaches are subordinated at the arrival of a foreign coach, TEENage feels that this can only lead to a dip in team morale and breed discontent among the players.

The continued search for foreign coaches at the expense of locals is shocking, considering the startling statistics that no country has ever won the FIFA World Cup with a foreign coach. Economically, the foreign coach’s salary is usually double that of locals and that means money taken out of our economy.

The question is, why not develop our coaches?

The treatment meted out to our compatriots is not unique and the only exception is track and field, where we are currently the dominant force.

There are always excuses for why our local coaches do not stand up to the test. Yet none of the reasons is able to stand scrutiny.

Look at the successes: Theodore ‘Tappa’ Whitmore, Connie Francis, Wendell Downswell, Stephen Francis, Glen Mills, etc.

As coach Stephen Francis said in an Observer article titled ‘Teach the fundamentals’ on April 16, 2011.

“If other sports in Jamaica can find a way to emulate the kind of thing in track and field where you are forced to teach youngsters and to encourage them… That’s the only way you can have discipline because you have to have discipline,” he said.

“Sports is now science and we now have to be able to use our limited resources… You don’t have to have the resources of say China, but you need to have the adjustments to do what they do in order to succeed.”

We need to protect our collective pride and self-confidence. That protection and subsequent success is based upon the sustained and unwavering faith in our human capital, our local coaches.

Bob Marley sang: “Emancipate yourself from mental slavery. None, but ourselves can free our minds,” and Marcus Garvey, one of our national heroes, once said: “Our success educationally, industrially and politically is based upon the protection of a nation founded by ourselves.”

TEENage hopes it is understood that we can never be powerful if we value more what others think about us than what we think of ourselves.