Very few people following schoolboy football in Jamaica would have given Rusea’s High School more than a snowball’s chance in hell of making the final of the ISSA/FLOW DaCosta Cup competition this year.

The Hanover-based team has not been very competitive in the past few years and one would have to go back to the 1990s for a time when they drove fear into the hearts of their opponents.

But things are changing quickly for a school where the sun sets in this beautiful island paradise. First came the arrival of a new Principal Linvern Wright and then with a new head Coach Vassell Reynolds.

Reynolds, the the former Wolmer’s coach, has taken over from Reggae Boy Aaron Lawrence and has been able to push the team beyond the expectations of many this year. Reynolds views the support and efforts of his players as key components in their performances to date.

“I would have gotten a lot of support from the school community, the canteen staff, members of the academic staff, the support from the fans — they really support the team wherever we go.

“Then we have a group of youngsters who… would have recognised what we (are) try to instill in them,” said the coach.

The achievement of winning the FLOW Super Cup last season with Wolmer’s Boys’ has helped to pave the way for Reynolds making the transition to Rusea’s as head coach.

“I had a meeting some time in February and I got a very warm welcome, mainly because I was coming off the back of a victory in the FLOW Super Cup, that would have helped. And from that first meeting I was pretty satisfied and it was a little bit easier for me to work with them,” he explained.

Time proved to be a friend to Reynolds and his boys as they used it wisely to get over the disappointment of losing to Kingston College in the Super Cup and prepare properly for the crucial semi-final match-up against heavy favourite, STETHS.

Those preparations saw them overpower the 2015 daCosta Cup champions 5-2 and powered their march into the final against preseason favourites Clarendon College.

“One of the things that we asked the team is to go out there and fight to the end. The equaliser was sheer persistence and fight from Shawn Bradford. We recognised where we went wrong against Kingston College, as I don’t think as a team we played well enough for the 90 minutes.

“We were very slow to the ball and the fifty-fifty balls KC would have won those balls, so we had a couple of days to prepare for this game and we got them a little bit sharper,” Reynolds noted.

With a 2-1 lead over STETHS at the break, game management was the theme of the half-time team talk and it served them well in the second half, as they racked up three more while just conceding one

“We urged the boys to be smart and manage the game, press when you have to and allow them some space where it wouldn’t hurt us, and I thought we did that very well,” he added.

Clarendon College have already won one piece of silverware this season, lifting the Ben Francis Cup trophy a few weeks ago, and will enter the final of the daCosta Cup next week Saturday as overwhelming favourites to make it two wins from two finals.

For Reynolds, however, that is not likely to have an impact on him or his players who will be ready to slay another Goliath and defy the pundits once more.

“We don’t have a problem with the fact that we will be going into that game as the underdogs. It’s a very good Clarendon College team, the team of the moment in the rural area. They are a very good attacking team, but we have a week and a half to prepare and I am pretty certain that we will be very competitive and we will be giving it our best shot,” said an adamant Reynolds.