ANYONE who has been paying keen attention to the rise of Omar Wedderburn, the St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) daCosta Cup coach, will probably realise that he’s been less “provocative” this season.

The banter that typified his interviews over the past two seasons — when he styled himself as the ‘King of the Streets’ or when he made that “common horse nuh win derby” remark — seems to be missing from his speech while on media duties this term. For instance, when STETHS opened their title defence with a startling 9-0 thrashing of BB Coke, Wedderburn simply told the camera the scoreline was irrelevant: “We were more interested in team shape.”

I was intrigued.

Is it a case of the school administration telling him to tone down; show more “respect” for his opponents? Is it that he’s starting to mellow in his role after three years in charge of STETHS? Or is it that he has been so consumed with plotting a strategy to help STETHS continue their dominance of schoolboy football, this side of the island, that he has no time to “psych out” the opposition?

As it turns out, it’s none of the above.

Waiting for the right moment to bite, Wedderburn would come to life, on the evening of Tuesday, September 14, while having a post-game chat with TVJ’s Damion Gordon. “As you know,” said Wedderburn, “crocodile don’t attack in haste, so we played a crocodile game today. We tek we little time and do what we had to do.”

Wedderburn, also known as Rambo, was referring to his team’s ability to rally for a point against overnight rivals Manchester High in their crucial top-of-the-table Inter-Zone clash in Santa Cruz. Defender Rushane McClymont scored the equaliser in time added, which saw STETHS topping their group and qualifying for the LIME Super Cup, ahead of Manchester on goal difference. But was he also saying that Manchester High are not real predators, lacking the killer instinct to finish off their prey after drawing first blood (through an own goal) early in the contest?

“Yes, enuh,” he confirmed, without even a second’s pause. “And we all know that, too, because we played against them and when you check it, STETHS scored both goals. They don’t really have what it takes to get at us.”

Candid statements like this might not find favour with everyone. Some are likely to think they are too blunt coming from a schoolboy coach. But don’t expect Wedderburn to change much anytime soon. “As coaches here in Jamaica, everybody seems to be doing the same types of interviews, coaching the same way, but I like to add my style to whatever I’m doing — mi nuh in a no boring t’ing — so whenever you hear me with a slang it is just a part of me,” says Wedderburn.

“First it was ‘King of the Streets’ because I was new to the coaching thing and then last year I come with ‘common horse’ because common horse nuh win derby. Well this year, I have a smaller team, so to speak, so I just seh: ‘crocodile nuh attack in haste’. We tek we own little time and we do what is necessary and to win games. And each time we attack is when it matters most.”

He continues: “When you picture track and field; over the years everybody just go out on the track, tek dem mark and ready to run. But when you look at Bolt; Bolt brings flavour to it. Bolt brings excitement to it. So in the same way, I have to keep my ting in the street. For instance, I always want my players to be properly attired, so I will look at them and seh: “Yuh coach a hot man; him a nuh flop man, so yuh ‘affi sharp.”

As he admits midway through our meeting on the verandah of his flat, situated at the front of the STETHS schoolyard, Wedderburn does talk a lot. But it’s easy to keep up. He’s a scrumptious blend of streetwise comedian, philosopher and serial optimist. He delivers his story, from a platform of authority, with admirable pride.

“They bash me a lot in 2012, saying that I cannot talk. But whenever I do an interview I want a three-year-old to look and say: ‘I hear Rambo seh dis’ or ‘I hear Wedderburn (or Coach) seh dat’, so I mix my t’ing. I try to keep it right in the streets because that’s where it matters. When you t’ink ’bout a corner shop you don’t expect support from uptown, you expect the majority to come from the streets. That’s how I think. I think about the upscale and I think about the lower class because that’s where I’m from. I understand the roughness of life, so I’ll never forget that,” he affirms.

The ‘street’ to which Wedderburn, the son of former national goalkeeper Clive ‘Spiderman’ Wedderburn, constantly refers is the Westmoreland capital, Savanna-la-Mar. That’s where he grew up attending Godfrey Stewart High School — formerly Savanna-la-Mar Secondary — before transferring to STETHS in 1995. “My dream to play daCosta Cup, I got that inspiration in 1994,” he recalls. “I went to a game at Frome — Petersfield versus Frome — and when I step through the gate and see the crowd I was confused. When I stand up and look and see the people, I said to myself: ‘Next year, I have to get this crowd; I have to hear this shouting in my ears while playing daCosta Cup.’

“Back then, the people in my community were very supportive of my career. As a youth in the ghetto, you have a tendency to want to smoke. But one time about five of us were sitting down and the other guys started to smoke. When I asked for a draw they told me that I’m the only athlete in the community so I just have to stay focused. From then I always used that as a motivation because, when you look at it, these were youngsters smoking and when I ask for a draw dem tell me no, I’m an athlete; I shouldn’t smoke. So until this day, I have no reason to smoke and I always love my community for that.”

Yet when the time arrived for the young goalkeeper to move to St Elizabeth, to advance his football education, his reputation as a “troubled” youth would provoke some members of that same community to predict a gloomy future for him in Santa Cruz. “As a coach, I like to coach the bad players, troubled players; players who don’t have any recommendation. I like to coach them because I was like that, a street kid,” he explains. “I can remember when Mr (Wendell) Downswell look at me and seh: ‘Your journey deserves a book because when I tell people I’m bringing you to STETHS even people that help to grow you tell me that I’m a mad man’. They tell him that I’m only going to come up here and let people lose respect for him, because I was going to beat up people pickney and things like that.”

Yet Downswell, still the technical director at STETHS after 30-plus years, never allowed the naysayers to influence the nature of his relationship with ‘Wedderburn’. “Mr Downswell is more like a father figure to me,” says Wedderburn. “Mr Downswell’s first child — only one year separates us; I’m the older one — we grow like brothers. When I couldn’t afford a football boots, he (being a left-footer) would give me the right foot and both of us would get the experience of what a football shoes feel like. Back then, he (Mr Downswell) would never leave me out, so up to this day, if a person doesn’t know, they would take me for Mr Downswell’s son. Words cannot express the respect I have for him. As a father figure, he’s the one.”

And it was that bond, among other things, that prompted the coach to ask his pupil to remain at STETHS in a big brother capacity after graduating in ’98. “Because I’m the vibes master,” says Wedderburn, “they asked me to stay on and mek the boys feel like I’m here just the same. Actually, you could say my career began in 1999, but it was behind the scenes. I used to work with the goalkeepers and I realised that I love the job, as a goalkeeper coach, so I was always here and there. I left here sometime in 2003.”

But so positive was his influence on the players that Keith Wellington, on becoming principal in 2008, decided to invite Wedderburn back to the school to work alongside the then new coach Andrew Edwards.

That partnership would last four seasons, yielding three trophies — two Ben Francis Knockout titles and the 2009 daCosta Cup. “It was two different styles,” says Wedderburn, now in his 30s. “Coach Edwards, a very bright individual, is more grounded university-wise and my life is based in the streets, but we develop a bond, an excellent bond. I was always behind the scene, though.”

But what he didn’t know was that this stint as Edwards’s lieutenant was actually a prep course for a much bigger role. For in 2012, Edwards decided to part ways with STETHS, joining their bitter parish rivals Munro College. Rather than appointing a high-profile replacement, Wellington and Downswell turned to the assistant. It was a huge show of confidence in the rookie coach — one that would be repeated just a few months later.

“We were in a ditch, and, as I said to Andrew at the time, ‘it is a bad time to leave us’. “Personally,” notes Wedderburn, “all assistant coaches should be thinking of becoming the head coach someday, but at the time I never had anything like that in mind. And I had no idea that they had me in mind, either. So when I got appointed, I was shocked. But when I really kick back and look at all the possibilities, I accepted the challenge with a smile on my face because I know further down the road I would be laughing.”

This was the season that Wedderburn, unknown to most people, dubbed himself ‘King of the Streets’. But rather than laughing, he would end the year in tears.

After leading STETHS to a third successive Ben Francis Cup, beating Grange Hill on penalties in the final, they lost the one that really mattered, the daCosta Cup final, edged out in extra-time by Glenmuir High. To say the young coach took this disappointment hard is an understatement.

“One week straight, I never left my room, crying non-stop,” he remembers, now with a smile. “I wasn’t even thinking that I was going to lose my job here. I was thinking about the players, because I could hear their voice in my head when they were crying. I couldn’t do anything else but join them. That game affected me mentally to the point where I couldn’t even eat; the players’ voices with the tears was just ringing in my head.”

But he got help, lots of help. “The principal was there for me, telling me that it was not the end of the road; I am taking it too hard and stuff like that.” (Wedderburn drifts further down memory lane, recalling his final year of high school.) “People always excited about the relationship I have with the principal, but what they don’t know is that I am one of the first set of students him teach when he got here in 1998. As they would say, I was a big man in the school, because it was our last year, so I am always thinking about the next step. He always see me on the corridor and seh: “If you don’t have any class you can always come to the computer lab’, because he was teaching IT at the time. Dem time deh we not even know ’bout computer. But him seh if it’s even to sit down play game, so we used to play the card game on the computer. It is a mutual respect from that time and I don’t think that will change, so I wasn’t thinking about losing my job. I was more thinking about 2013; that I want the season to start now because I knew I could do it. What I didn’t know at the time is that what you use to get to the final you cannot use it to win the final. So it was a life lesson then: you do everything to reach at the top, but what you going to do to maintain it? I didn’t know the answer at the time.

“But you know what really help me through this time? The encouragement I got from a lot of top coaches. Like Jerome Waite, Geoffrey Maxwell, Junior Bennett, Clive Ledgister, Wendell Downswell and the famous Jackie Walters, the same man who beat me in the final. His words make me who I am today. He said — and this always stuck in my head whenever I go to a match. He said, ‘coach, you learn the hard way so you’ll be the hardest coach to beat in any final’. From that, each time I see Mr Walters I always shout out to him, because his words were an inspiration. And as a young coach, I like to say this to others: you have to surround yourselves with mentors. But” — there’s a sudden pause; he’s trying to stress his point — “positive mentors because learning will never end. You cannot learn too much in life. Just like coaching. You cannot stop being a coach because you do everything possible at training, but when you go to the match you see something that you have to address.”

There’s another pause; this time he’s searching for the right words. On second thought, perhaps he’s just being reflective. As though feeding off the memories, he returns to the conversation.

“I like to talk about the bad times,” he says, “because the bad things motivate me to go forward. I don’t like to dwell on the glory times because the glory times mek yuh have a slower mentality towards life. You are always living in that dream, but when you think about the bad things that happened to you it encourages you to do better. So, as I always seh to the players, there’s no such thing as bad luck. No such ting as a bad time; you can always tek yuh time and find the positives out of it; learn from the bad situation.”

And so it proved, because the following season Wedderburn and his STETHS unit would atone. Not only did they retain the Ben Francis Cup for a record fourth successive time, they also reclaimed the daCosta Cup, humiliating Garvey Maceo 4-1 in the final at the Montego Bay Sports Complex. “To be honest, when we became the only school to win the Ben Francis four times in a row, that wasn’t even on my mind,” notes Wedderburn. “My mind was on the big one, so we went into a meeting with the players and let them know what the objective was. What they did after that was truly amazing; they strike a deal among themselves.

“We had three players who came over from Rusea’s. They won the daCosta Cup before, but not the Ben Francis. The other players won the Ben Francis, but didn’t know what it was like to win the daCosta Cup, so the ‘Rusea’s players’ decided they would win the daCosta Cup for them. In return, they would win the Ben Francis for the ‘Rusea’s guys’. I tell you, it was really amazing, because at the end of the season I think they met their own objectives.”

But with success of this nature — six trophies in the last five years — there’s also a price: STETHS are no longer the hunter; they are now the hunted. “We know that (we are) the team that every school wants to beat,” says Wedderburn, “so we just have to turn the script: we want to beat every team. That is the only way we can crown ourselves champions. So when teams out there planning to beat STETHS; what they don’t know is that STETHS is training to beat them, because each time I achieve something, like last year, I don’t look at myself and say ‘I am the defending daCosta Cup champions’. I always think about what I have to do next. And I’m looking to be crowned this year.”