RESULTS are secondary for Denham Town High Head Coach Marvin Tate as he’s using the school’s football programme to tackle violence in the surrounding communities.

Denham Town suffered a 0-2 defeat to Wolmer’s Boys’ in the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association/Wata Manning Cup match on Friday at the St Andrew Technical High School playing field. Wolmer’s goals came from Captain Daquan Duhaney and substitute Addon Daye.

It’s the second defeat in a row for Denham Town after going down 1-4 to Tivoli Gardens High in their opening game on Monday.

Tate says community violence has affected the team’s preseason preparations but he’s remaining optimistic things can improve in the days to come.

“We’ve had our challenges and still have challenges. We’re in a community where our players have been hampered all season from the violence,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“We hardly got any time on the field to train because players live in adjoining communities which are actually at war. We took time out for a week to camp and it’s actually bringing some fruit — we’ve seen an improvement in the team and going forward we’ll see more improvements.” Tate, who also serves as general secretary of Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA), says he’s steadfast in bringing peace and unity to the school and communities at large.

“The main reason I’m actually at Denham Town is to do my best to save some of these youngsters who are, as far as I’m concerned, open to gang warfare and crime on a whole. At one stage I thought, more or less, I was losing the battle last year but I decided to return and, so far, it has done a lot to bring both the Tivoli and Denham Town communities together,” he said.

“We’re still working on it because presently we’re training at the community centre in Tivoli Gardens and many of the players are living by Denham Town, and at times we go to Boys’ Town because we have players that live inside Tivoli. So it’s working, and we see — especially the last game — we had people from Tivoli and Denham Town coming out and galvanising the team, and that’s a success so far. Are we there yet? No, we have a lot more to offer to the community. And I’m hoping that in the future we’ll be able to get some support from corporate Jamaica, any well-wishers who really want to save a school and a community.”

While pleased with the victory, Wolmer’s Boys’ Head Coach Jerome Waite says his team can learn from the Denham Town team.

“It’s a work in progress and it’s also a learning process for them because when you’re playing against inner-city teams, when those boys start to relay certain things on the pitch, it will show how mentally strong you are — which we have seen a lot of weakness in that area so that’s something I’ll have to spend time to work on,” said Waite.

The Heroes’ Circle-based boys have won their opening two games, and Waite says they’ll continue to build on their start, despite their own challenges.

“We’ll analyse the game, sit down and discuss what we could have done better, where we still need to improve, and then we see how best [to get] some more work done. We still don’t have a field to train because of the [renovation] work being done at Wolmer’s, but we’re working on the side of the pitch, and once they come out, they’ll improve,” he said.

FRIDAY’S RESULTS

•Denham Town 0, Wolmer’s 2

•Camperdown 1, Haile Selassie 2

•Kingston Technical 2, Vauxhall 3

•Dunoon 3, Clan Carthy 2

•Meadowbrook 0, Penwood 5

•Ardenne 0, Eltham 10

SATURDAY’S GAMES

•Kingston College vs Cumberland @ Stadium East

•Jamaica College vs Ascot @ Jamaica College

•STATHS vs Calabar @ Boys’ Town

•Excelsior vs Bridgeport @ Excelsior

•Holy Trinity vs St Catherine @ Alpha

•Papine vs St George’s College @ Papine

(Games set to start 3:30 pm)