It is said that a good coach and good coach­ing can build will, skill, knowl­edge and ca­pac­i­ty be­cause it can go where no oth­er pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment has gone be­fore: in­to the in­tel­lect, be­hav­iours, prac­tices, be­liefs, val­ues and feel­ings of an ed­u­ca­tor and his or her stu­dents. You think I’m mak­ing this up? Ask any young stu­dent or foot­baller who passed through St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege un­der the guid­ance of Nigel Grosvenor for just over the past two decades and they’ll tell you.

It was Oc­to­ber 1997 and I had just set­tled in­to my first year of sports re­port­ing for this news­pa­per. For­mer sports ed­i­tor Valenti­no Singh took a chance with me. A youth­ful 16-year-old just out of CXC from the south­land. It was my first Sec­ondary School’s Foot­ball League (SS­FL) and In­ter­col sea­son. A few months lat­er, I was al­so thrown deep­er in­to the fire, cov­er­ing the Craven A Se­mi-Pro League and the Caribbean Cup which was host­ed by T&T in 1998. But one par­tic­u­lar ex­pe­ri­ence stood out for me from that pe­ri­od. The Queen’s Park Oval was near ca­pac­i­ty filled for the 1997 Na­tion­al In­ter­col Fi­nal be­tween un­der­dogs St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege and St Bene­dict’s Col­lege. Be­ing a south boy I was nat­u­ral­ly hop­ing for a win for the La Ro­maine Li­ons who had been fly­ing all sea­son un­der the coach­ing of Muham­mad Isa and play­mak­er Kester “Blacks” Corn­wall. But the boys from West­moor­ings had oth­er plans on the day and Grosvenor was the main ar­chi­tect be­hind it.

Young Car­los Ed­wards was in the squad that won the fi­nal 2-1 and the fol­low­ing day Singh sent me on an as­sign­ment to cov­er the cel­e­bra­tions at St An­tho­ny’s. I was ner­vous not know­ing what to ex­pect plus in­ex­pe­ri­ence at the time made it dif­fi­cult for me to un­der­stand how it is the “un­der­dogs” could tri­umph on the big stage. My first ad­vice from Singh was to head di­rect­ly to the Prin­ci­pal’s of­fice, ex­plain why I was there and fig­ure out the rest on my own. So imag­ine me strut­ting in­to un­known ter­ri­to­ry with my Guardian note­book and a voice recorder. Mo­bile Phones weren’t yet pop­u­lar. And up came the big fig­ure of “Grovey” to meet me in the Prin­ci­pal’s of­fice. From that mo­ment, I was made to feel like I had been part of the “Tigers” camp all sea­son. It was maybe one of the coolest ex­pe­ri­ences I’ve had in the com­pa­ny of a cham­pi­onship-win­ning side as “Grovey” made sure I ob­tained all the ma­te­r­i­al that I had been in search of to put to­geth­er my biggest sto­ry of the sea­son.

From then on it was al­ways pure joy every time we crossed paths. “Aye Shauny how thing’s man” was a greet­ing I had grown ac­cus­tomed to and most times it would be a case of Grovey call­ing me out be­fore I even saw him. We would lat­er work on the same team when he was ap­point­ed head coach of the Na­tion­al Un­der-17 Youth Team and though the re­sults were not favourable, it was far from an un­pleas­ant ex­pe­ri­ence with him at the helm.

Rough­ly two weeks ago, my­self and Car­los Ed­wards start­ed a Zoom in­ter­view rem­i­nisc­ing about his days un­der Grovey. He re­called that his col­lege head coach was the rea­son he end­ed up in the De­fence Force both as an of­fi­cer and a play­er be­fore join­ing Wrex­ham in Wales. “It was the week that we won the In­ter­col in ’97 and one morn­ing I heard horns blar­ing out­side around 5:30 and when I look out it was Grovey call­ing out and telling me to get my bags packed ... we head­ing down Tetron. He had men­tioned it be­fore but he was se­ri­ous now and on­ly Grovey could have got­ten me to en­ter the Army. The rest is his­to­ry be­cause when I look back now I could un­der­stand what he saw in me and why he pushed me to go that route which even­tu­al­ly led to my break in the UK,” Ed­wards told me.

Mal­colm Glad­well, the au­thor of Out­liers: The Sto­ry of Suc­cess (2008), cal­cu­lates that it takes 10,000 hours of de­lib­er­ate prac­tice—a prac­tice that pro­motes con­tin­u­ous im­prove­ment—to mas­ter a com­plex skill. This trans­lates in­to about sev­en years for those work­ing in schools. The ma­jor­i­ty of teach­ers and prin­ci­pals want pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment; they want to im­prove their craft, be more ef­fec­tive, im­ple­ment new skills, and see stu­dents learn more. St An­tho­ny’s Col­lege got that from Grosvenor.

A coach can fos­ter con­di­tions in which deep re­flec­tion and learn­ing can take place, where a teacher can take risks to change his prac­tice, where pow­er­ful con­ver­sa­tions can take place and where growth is rec­og­nized and cel­e­brat­ed. Grovey per­formed both roles. He was in charge of a space where heal­ing took place and where a re­silient, joy­ful com­mu­ni­ty was built in the west.

Coach­es im­pact their play­ers by teach­ing life skills in hopes of de­vel­op­ing pos­i­tive re­la­tion­ships. Grovey did that. Just ask any of his play­ers from the likes of Ken­wyne Jones, Jan Michael Williams, Brent Rahim, Julius James, Ed­wards and oth­ers. He es­tab­lished a pos­i­tive ath­lete-coach re­la­tion­ship where it was un­der­stood that no re­la­tion­ship, whether on or off the play­ing field would blos­som with­out com­mu­ni­ca­tion and the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the play­er and coach. The play­ers of St An­tho­ny's felt that their coach cared about them as a per­son and not just as a tool to win games and ti­tles. Play­ers are peo­ple first and ef­fec­tive coach­es take the time for the young stu­dent as well as the play­er. And as a pos­i­tive ath­lete-coach re­la­tion­ship de­vel­ops, many ath­letes be­gin con­sid­er­ing their coach­es as role mod­els. Grovey was that! Your time on this earth would be cher­ished for years to come. It was a plea­sure shar­ing these mo­ments with you Nigel Grosvenor.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is the head of TTFA Me­dia. He is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa and 2013 FI­FA U-20 World Cup in Turkey The views ex­pressed are sole­ly his and not a rep­re­sen­ta­tion of any or­gan­i­sa­tion.