MIGUEL Coley’s meteoric rise to the national coaching set-up may have been a surprise to most people. But to the coach himself, it really has to do with his success at Jamaica College (JC).

“Sometimes you are doing a lot of work and probably not winning like at Barbican. Before we got promoted to the Premier League, we were always coming like second in the Super League,” Coley told the Jamaica Observer.

He continued: “At Norman Manley, we went to the semi-final two times. Everything I was doing was basically under the radar. So it will be a surprise for a lot of persons, but it’s for them to understand the nature of what I can do.”

Coley, 32, whose playing career was cut short because of injury in 2005, has been coaching for a number of years, and only last year, was drafted as assistant head coach to German Winfried Schaefer.

Having gained valuable experience while playing in the daCosta Cup for Holmwood Technical between 1998-2001, he was an attacking player who averaged 10 to 12 goals a season. Although he did not win the daCosta Cup, his 1999 team went unbeaten and drew with eventual champion St Elizabeth Technical High School.

However, not many top players make the transition to becoming top coaches and Coley believes that being qualified as a teacher of English Literature and Physical Education (PE) has helped to mould him into an astute and successful coach.

“I am a teacher by profession, teaching for 10 years now, and there are some basic elements in which people learn, so you can transfer that to coaching,” he noted. He taught at Norman Manley High School for eight years and is in his second year at JC.

Coley, who has led JC to four titles, already capturing the Manning Cup and the All-Island Olivier Shield in 2013 plus the inaugural LIME $1-million dollar Super Cup and the Manning Cup again in 2014, said winning was not new to him having led Mile Gully to the Division One title in Manchester where he also won the Player of the Year award.

Coley, a graduate of Mico University College, who also has a Level II coaching certificate, last played competitive football for Waterhouse in 2005 before an injury curtailed his playing days as a sprightly 23 year-old.

After leaving Mico, Coley went to Norman Manley High as a teacher and was assistant coach to Alrick Clarke before taking charge of the Manning Cup team from 2008, before moving on to JC in 2013.

Other than football, Coley also dabbled in cricket, basketball and volleyball and won the Sportsman of the Year award at Mico.

But it’s not all about sports for Coley, who considers himself a poet, having won the Red Bones Café Poet of the Year in 2012.

For now, Coley, who will be hunting his third title of the year with JC, is quite content that JC’s football programme is second to none, thereby laying the foundation to dominate schoolboy football for the foreseeable future.

“Make God lead you in terms of decision and stuff like that. It is somewhere where I am comfortable being, and I am happy,” said Coley.