AS football coach of Arima North Secondary, there are many stories that Wayne Sheppard tells.
One is about a trip to drop one of his players home after practice. The drop-off having been completed, Sheppard proceeds to complete a full turn in the crescent he is in, only to be stopped by the frantic youngster who warns him about going further. Why? Because one side of the crescent is warring with the other side. The coach wisely reverses.
Then there is Sheppard’s first day at training with his new team back in 2019. Players keep dropping out of a running drill. “When I started asking,” he says, “this one ain’t eat since yesterday breakfast —two eggs.”
More than once as he relates what the last five years have been like coaching at the East Trinidad school, Sheppard uses the expression, “two different planets.”
Having come from the West at Fatima College where he went to school, played his football and then later coached, operating at the institution from the eastern borough has brought home the different worlds in which young people on these islands exist.
But as the sun always rises over the horizon in the East, Sheppard has also seen brighter days at Arima North since that eye-opening training session—on and off the field.
Arima North today
Existing in virtual oblivion since the first season of the Premier Division in 2014, Arima North returned to the top tier of the Secondary Schools Football League in 2023. And they have let everyone in the SSFL know that the once well-respected “Dial Dynamos” are back in business.
Last year, Arima completed their first season in the rebranded Premier Division by finishing sixth out of 16 teams. As a bonus, they also won the East Zone InterCol title before losing to a stoppage time goal to eventual champions Presentation College San Fernando in the national semi-finals.
This season, Arima lost their East InterCol title but improved on their league position, finishing fifth, despite what coach Sheppard described as “one of the worst pre-seasons I have ever had.”
Not at the moment blessed with talents like “Strike Squad” 1989 World Cup qualifying hero Kerry Jamerson or the legendary Colleges League goalscorer Timothy Haynes, who netted 39 times in the 1985 season in which he won the then-Arima Senior Comprehensive the East Zone league and InterCol titles; Arima North are today being built on more than just natural ability and flair.
Basing his approach on the structure he left at Fatima under technical director Hayden Martin, Sheppard went with a vision of how he wanted his teams to play. And he has assembled a staff that has bought into that vision. They include manager Lasana Liburd and assistant coaches Dexter Thornhill and Lyndon Emmons.
Besides the senior team, Sheppard has also found himself having to coach all the school’s teams at the lower levels. Arima North had no under-16 side when he went there. That has since been put in place as Sheppard tries to develop a way of playing that filters from the under-14 level right to the top.
“We have a distinct style of play that is totally different to what the rest of Trinidad is saying...The players understand how we want to play,” coach Sheppy says with both confidence and satisfaction.
The results have been there to show.
While Arima “only” won the East Zone Under-16 and Senior Division knockout titles this season, they got to every zonal final, losing three only on spot kicks. In 2023, they won seven of eight titles they competed for in their zone.
How change came
The turnaround has been as much about the players as the coaches.
While playing the football has been the main focus, Sheppard and his staff have also been strong on discipline and education. Boys can no longer show up for practice without coming to school also. And participating.
“The standard we set was that the boys had to attend class regularly; they had to be disciplined, they had to put the effort in and we saw that everybody’s grades went up,” relates manager Liburd. He adds: “By year two, there were teachers actually offering us students; students who were not too disciplined, because they realised that there was a level of control because of football.”
Both coach and manager stress that the primary goal for their Arima North project is to produce student athletes who can get athletic scholarships like some already have, like Akiel Henry.
Lessons
“It shows with the right guidance and structure in place, you could really get boys to flourish and you could really make an impact on them,” says Liburd.
And he sights as an example the growth of Criston ‘CJ” Gomez, rejected at national Under-14 level but now a standout in the T&T Under-17 team.
“He would be an example of a boy who had all the tools but was a ‘sweater’ in a sense. He needed to understand (certain things) because he is a very bright boy in terms of football IQ..,He just needed an environment to really help him to bring his talent out. He got that I think within our programme.”
Sheppard makes this point about nurturing by way of his “two planets” comparison.
“I have gotten way more respect from these kids in Arima than I have ever gotten from Fatima,” he says, explaining that, “the boy In Fatima in general, has everything, and has the support; that (if) this doh work, I have this and I have that. The boy in Arima is growing up nine out of ten times in a single parent home; is growing up in an environment where when I look around for models, the coach might be the first positive male model I’m interacting with, and my teacher.”
He adds: “The boys very simple in terms of, once they realise that you are for them, that you are being fair...(once) they realise you are telling them something for their benefit, they there for you.”
Impact of football programme
The transformation of the football programme has not gone unnoticed by the rest of the school population, or indeed, the wider Arima community.
“You see it,” says Sheppard. The children are proud to be Arima...When we won the East Zone InterCol (2023), we had an assembly in the school and you just saw a difference. When you walk around the school there is a difference.”
Liburd tells another of the many stories that makes the point further.
“I think it was in year two (of the Sheppard tenure). Every year the school has to do a beautification project, and they (the students) on their own came with a Dial Dynamos sign into the school which would have been one sign for sure that the students were excited about what we were doing.” Dial Dynamos is the football team’s nickname.
As for the wider community, some from the borough, some notable ones, have put their hands in their pockets to help the team in times of need.
Liburd says when they had no money to travel and arrange affairs for their trip to Mahaica Oval, Point Fortin for last year’s national InterCol semi-final, “It was Penny Beckles (current government minister), Neil Parsanlal (former minister) and (the late junior minister and former mayor) Lisa Morris-Julian who saved us that day...They paid for us to get a PTSC coach and lunch.”
Sheppard, who does his work for no pay admits: “If I could stay and coach Arima...and just deal with the players, I would stay there until I can’t do this coaching thing anymore.” But he also acknowledges that for the Arima North project to have further success and eventually reach all its targets, greater monetary support is required.
“You have to have some sort of association that isn’t just of lip service; that is active in fund-raising. You need to have financial backing.”
But even if the lip service continues, it would be a surprise if Sheppard did not continue working on his poor man’s budget.
The “diamonds” he is discovering in the Arima soil are just too precious to discard.
SOURCE: T&T Express
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