MONTEGO BAY, St James — From an idea to help young people avoid crime in their inner-city community, then earning a grant from the United States Embassy in Kingston in the 2020-21 season, the operators of Springers Football Club think they are poised for a major breakthrough on the field.

The team, which was founded in the inner-city community of Salt Spring, St James, has been able to attract players from across the island and has held its own against the very best women’s teams in Jamaica.

It also boasts a national player in its ranks, 18-year-old Fredricka Finnikin, a free-scoring striker with silky ball-handling skills.

The club started out like many others, for young men, said founder and coach Owen Barrett, himself a product of the tough Salt Spring neighbourhood.

He said he was trying to find a way out for residents of his community who were frequently exposed to violence.

According to Barrett, the name Springers was taken from the name of the community.

“I wanted to give back to my community, but at the time there was a lot of negativity with the gangs and violence and what have you in the community,” Barrett told the Jamaica Observer in an interview session organised by the US Embassy.

“I did not want that stigma hanging around the team, so I decided to go with the name Springers instead of Salt Spring,” added Barrett, who started the club in 2018.

It was not a decision to start a male or female club, he said, but it was the male team that he managed to organise first.

“It was more on bringing the males together to have a more peaceful community. I started [a] togetherness programme with the males and it worked,” he said.

Barrett pointed out that he used football to get members of warring gangs to play together and they had some success, just missing the semi-finals of the St James Major League in one season.

After that he switched to the women, but the cost of running the club was more than he was able to finance on his own and without local sponsors who shared his vision. That was when he was made aware of the opportunity to benefit from one of the programmes run by the US Embassy.

His application for the grant was successful, and Barrett said they were able to do more than just bring in the girls to play football.

“It was more of educating the females in my community, and I decided to use sports to introduce different ideas. and along with the American Embassy, we were able to introduce a number of new things, including violence resolution and from there we also taught the girls to play football.

“Most of them never played before, most of them never played competitive football, a lot of them never actually played on a football pitch, so, yes, we [introduced them to football] through the programme that was set out and did the workshops, and here we are.”

He said the grant “helped mostly with the workshops, not too much on the football side of things, mostly with the workshops, and because that was my focus as well, so it was not just getting a female and go, ‘Come play some football’”.

Barrett noted that there are several differences between men and women when it comes to preparing them for sporting activities.

“There are a lot of things we have to take into account. We have to look at a female, someone else’s daughter, someone else’s wife, someone else’s wife to be, and so we have to make sure the environment that we are bringing the females into is suitable.

“We can’t just go to a field and go, ‘Let’s go play football,’ what about the bathroom area, the changing room? I wouldn’t want a girl to change behind a car or behind the bush, so we have to have proper, proper preparation when it comes to the female. So the grant from the US Embassy and the workshop, it helped a lot,” said Barrett.

On the football field, Barrett said while they had some success, there are still a lot of areas in which they can improve, “but I am happy where we are now; we are going to go into our third year, and our first year we managed to reach the semi-final”.

Springers has also been able to send players to other clubs.

“The programme generates so many players that a few years ago some of them had gone over to the other team in St James, which was also a good team. Without the programme, a lot of females wouldn’t have got this opportunity also. So I am pleased with the programme.”

He said the age range in the team was wide. “It’s raging from 14 years old, and the oldest player on the team is 42 years old,” which he said benefited all as each can learn from the other.

According to Barrett, the success stories in the club were many and varied and were not just about football wins.

He singled out Tamira Edwards, who evolved from being a player to team captain and then a coach and is now a the owner of a Concacaf D licence, the only female in Montego Bay with that level of qualification.

He also pointed to Finnikin, who he said is on the verge of a move away from Jamaica, and Danique Wilson, who is attending college in Texas.

“One of the intentions is to get the players to go away, gain the experience, and come back to develop the country,” he said, “because the programme is about development, it’s not about being the best team in the country, it’s about development for female football.”

Barrett said Finnikin’s inclusion in several national junior teams was a massive fillip for Springers.

“It means a lot, and the fact that myself and Fredricka are from Salt Spring, where we are trying to bring some positive highlight to the community, and who knows, maybe without Springers Fredricka might have not had the opportunity to play on the big stages,” added Barrett.

While most of the players are from Salt Spring, Springers has been able to attract players from other parishes.

“We managed to get 16 players from the community, but based on a number of things some of the girls couldn’t stay on, some of them went on to further their education, some of them went on to seek employment, and we wanted to extend the programme, so what we did, we reached out to different schools in the parishes and community clubs, and [we are] trying to seek if there’s any female, because there were no female teams for a female to play football.

“So we put the word out there if you wanted to play, no matter where you’re from. We have one of our players from St Elizabeth, and she had to travel to training each morning and back home afterwards. Each trip is two hours plus and we start training at 7:00 am.

“She is one of the first players on the field, and she’s coming from St Elizabeth, and when we finish training at 10:00 am, she has to leave and get the bus back to St Elizabeth,” said Barrett.

He said six of the players at the club are from Kingston and they train with the Molynes United team where they have an agreement with well-known coach, Bradley Stewart.

While some coaches set targets for winning titles, Barrett says his immediate goal is “to see as many young females from the surrounding communities in St James get the opportunity to play football”.

According to Barrett, “My long-term goal is to keep this club going for as long as ever, to see more players getting on like Fredricka, who’s on the national team now. I would like to see more players getting the opportunity to be on the national team, I would like to also see the players that were getting the opportunity and also I would want to see the players coming back to give back to society and hopefully the programme would also help them to do all that.”

Finnikin, who was at the interview, said the programme helped her to fine-tune her game and get fit enough to be able to play at the highest level here.

The player, who once scored five goals in Salt Spring Primary’s 8-0 win in a St James VM Foundation Under-13 game, playing against boys, said, “It helped me a lot because at one time I wasn’t fit enough to play in the Premier League and if it wasn’t for Coach Barrett, I am not sure what I would do.”

Some members of Springers FC, (standing from left) Jerry Reid, Samoi Jackson, Delica Grant, Fredricka Finnikin and Owen Barrett. Kneeling at front is Kitoni Baggaloo.

National junior representative Fredricka Finnikin and Owen Barrett, founder and head coach of Springers FC