Polishing the hidden gem
... the world of Stephen Francis
Jamaica Observer
Saturday, June 25, 2005



Coach Stephen Francis poses for the camera with executive members
and a few senior athletes from the MVP track and field club. Others
from left (standing) are David Noel, club secretary; Michael Frater,
sprinter; Bruce James, club president; Paul Francis (younger brother
of Stephen), assistant coach and club treasurer. Seated from left:
Brigitte Foster, 100m hurdles national record holder; Asafa Powell,
100m world record holder; and Sherone Simpson, Olympic sprint relay
gold medalist. (Photos: Bryan Cummings)

Overweight and with a liking for long, deep drags on a cigarette in
his spare moments, Stephen Francis would hardly be picked out of a
crowd by the uninformed and identified as Jamaica's leading track
and field coach.
But it takes only a short chat to realise that the man who has
guided new 100-metre world record holder Asafa Powell and others to
the top, not only loves track and field, he is up to his ears in it.

More than that, Francis, with a Master's in Business Administration
from the University of Michigan, has an unshakeable belief in the
correctness of his own coaching philosophy and in his ability to get
athletes to achieve their potential.


FRANCIS... the most important ingredient I want to see in a
youngster is hunger for success
In a real sense, it was his 'feel' for what he considered to be the
right thing for young athletes that caused him to drift away from
high school coaching in the 1990s.

It gradually dawned on him while coaching at Wolmer's - his alma
mater - that he would never win high school athletic championships
because he wasn't prepared to push Under-14s (class three) into the
winners' enclosure at all costs. The overriding evidence, he pointed
out, was that especially at Boys' Champs, schools needed a strong
class three to have a real shot at winning.

"I think I realised from about '94/95 that my coaching philosophies
and my situation ... was going to make it extremely difficult for
Wolmer's to win Champs," he told Sporting World.


JOHNSON... agreed to employ Francis at UTech
"There were some philosophies, some things which were required which
I was never in agreement with. The key thing was the class three
athletes, I never did believe in Under-14 people training too hard.
My class three was always a very optional thing, if you wanted to
come to train, fine. My key thing for class three athletes was
always to get them interested in the sport and hopefully they would
have a measure of success.

"I believed that the athlete at class two and class one was where
the performance would serve them a lot better throughout life, so as
a result my class three athletes were never able to compete really
very well against the main school competitors unless they were
extremely talented. So I realised early that unless I changed that
philosophy I was not going to be able to win.


FOSTER... asked Francis in 1999 to guide her
"But what I was trying to do was to produce athletes of a high
quality... Therefore once we began producing more and more quality
older juniors then it became easy to be attracted to pushing it a
little further..."

It was easy then for him when Brigitte Foster, now the national
record holder for the 100m hurdles, approached him in '99 to guide
her.


SIMPSON... a star for MVP
He recalls that he wasn't Foster's first choice. But the
latter's 'first choice' failed on a number of occasions to honour
his commitment to meet her and the frustrated athlete, intent on
bucking the trend and pursuing a track career in Jamaica instead of
the United States or Europe, turned to Francis.

"... Almost at the same time, Neil Gardner (hurdler) who had been
here training with Mr Fitz Coleman at Wolmer's decided that he was
going to switch back to me who was his coach in high school, and
Donovan Housen (sprinter) ... had some immigration problems in the
US and couldn't go back to school ... so almost at one shot I had
three athletes who were seniors to coach..," said Francis.

It was an opportunity too good to be missed, and one thing led to
another.

"I decided, 'Look, if I am going to do this thing I have to do it on
a full-time basis'; I was fooling myself and fooling them (athletes)
if I believed that I could do it part-time and for them to be
successful..." he said. Francis also recognised the need for
a "wider base" for athletes and for them to have an educational
option.

So he approached Dennis Johnson, Olympian and 100-yard record holder
of the early 1960s who directs the sports programme at UTech and
asked to become his assistant.

Johnson said "yes" and all of a sudden Francis and his athletes
had "access" to the facilities at UTech plus their options for
boarding and accommodation.

"That is pretty much how it started, almost by accident," he now
says of the genesis of the UTech-based MVP track club.

Accident? Perhaps it was a little accidental, but Francis also says
he had long wondered about the reasons for local coaches not pushing
on, after achieving excellence at the junior level. Why, he
wondered, should it be a must for talented Jamaican athletes to
be 'finished' in US colleges?

"I used to talk to coaches back in the 90s and I used to always
wonder 'But why? if we can do this at the junior level why can't we
also do it at the senior level...?'

"I was always told that such a programme required millions of
dollars and so on..."

But, says Francis, "My philosophy has always been that not
everything requires an ideal start. The thing to do would be to try
first with whatever minimal resources you have and then see if you
can make a success of it at the start and then it can attract
funding ...,"

In building the track club to what it is now, Francis found that
attracting funding, be it from government or private sources, was
the hardest part.

Indeed, as the success of his athletes multiplied their earnings
became the source of the money for equipping the MVP track club and
its resource base.

"We generate money from what the athletes earn... we now have a
strength coach, two masseurs, a chef, an administrator...," he says
with pride.

And while he believes coaches make too much of an issue of "modern
facilities" he confesses that he would now find it difficult to
operate outside of the well-stocked UTech gym - much of the
equipment provided by MVP.

"I will say that I would not be operating as a coach outside of
UTech because a lot of the things that we have are just not
available to the other coaches and so I couldn't imagine coaching
without them. So I would imagine that it would be a great stumbling
block to other coaches who want to emulate what MVP has done...,"
Francis said.

Looking back Francis insists that all that has been achieved would
have been impossible had track and field not shed the amateurism
that had held it back for decades.

"Certainly ... if it wasn't possible to earn from the sport, my
programme could not exist," he says categorically. "The support base
would just not be there. To compete at the highest level, the
athlete needs a full-time coach ... who is going to pay this coach?
How is this coach going to take care of himself and his dependents
and so on if he is not paid?

"Also, the coach you need is not somebody who is in his 20s or
probably even early 30s. What you need is somebody who has had a
large amount of experience at the sport. That person has to be paid.
The government doesn't pay coaches as far as I know. The federation
doesn't pay coaches, nor does the Olympic Association, so the coach
has to be able to earn money. The athletes need a basic level of
support if they are going to be able to move from whatever level
they are as teenagers to a world-class level.

"There is a whole lot of equipment required which has to come from
somewhere.. Traditionally our schools, our tertiary schools,
universities, colleges have not been interested in helping people
whose inclination is sports ... in the same way they will want to
help those who want to become doctors, lawyers etc. Sport has never
been seen in Jamaica as a viable career.... (or as) a viable service
industry ... This has been recognised throughout the world, but we
have been slow in catching on ..." he said.

Francis claimed that for years UTech (previously CAST) had been the
only tertiary institution (not counting GC Foster College) where
students could get an education, while training in a meaningful way.

The problem was that UTech could only attract the rejects from US
colleges at a time when it was very easy to get a scholarship to a
US college.

All that, he noted, has now changed with the growing realisation
that world-standard training can be accessed at home. That plus the
fact of the growing 'professionalisation' of track and field
combined with the now increasing difficulty of getting into US
colleges.

And as he looks to make his track club even more sustainable,
Francis is backing himself to be able to spot talent that will not
only succeed on the track, but will fit comfortably in the embrace
of the UTech campus with its mix of degree, diploma and certificate
programmes.

He has his own formula - always hunting for the under-dog athlete,
who often fails to achieve anything of note at high school
championships. He notes that many of his top athletes, not least
Powell, Foster and Olympic sprint gold medalist Sherone
Simpson, "never won a race" at Champs.

"My programme involves spotting athletes, who I think will fit into
the structure we have. I totally avoid those athletes with the
biggest names. So I would not, for example, be recruiting a Usain
Bolt or Anneisha McLaughlin...

"I believe that the most important ingredient I want to see in a
youngster is hunger for success. I believe that when you have
achieved a lot of success very early, then it is possible that the
hunger for that success is not going to be as strong as somebody who
has constantly been beaten by you over the years.

"Now I can't afford to ask somebody to come to school at UTech, in
most cases foregoing a track scholarship and so on and have them
fail. The people I take ... have to be guaranteed 100 per cent
success or else you going to say 'Boy, this person could have done
this or that', so I have to make sure that the person gets his
education and I have to make sure that the person benefits a lot.

"So first is the selection process. And the selection process is
geared towards the hidden gem ..."


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