Percival Cordwell (right)... celebrates with a young protégé.
EVERYBODY KNOWS him as 'Itesman', the Rastafarian coach who has been coaching Holy Family Primary and just about every team in the Rae Town and Southside communities that play football.
One week ago, Holy Family retained their title as league champions of the INSPORTS/CB Chicken Primary competition and launched their quest for the double with a 3-1 win in the knockout competition over Balmagie yesterday.
Percival Cordwell is his real name and nothing matters more to the father of two sons and a daughter than nurturing the youthful talent spread across the vast community that produced him.
Born October 28, 1945 while his parents lived at 5 Rosemary Lane, 'Itesman', who has since resided at other addresses within the community, has won several awards for his service, most notably the Guinness Stout Effort Merit Award and Abe Alexander Memorial Award.
He played as a forward or outside right for Central Youth Club, Santos in the Winston Chung-Fah-run era, and Black Youth United where he picked up the injury that pushed him off the field and into coaching.
Cordwell was somehow bound to end up at Holy Family, the school he attended under the name East Branch until the infamous '51 storm 'Charlie' wrecked it and the name was changed with its reconstruction. Now, the school, which he started coaching 26 to 27 years ago non-stop while acting upon an invitation from Roger Gordon ('Brother Roger'), is the base for the talent he is building in the community often affected by violence.
Question: How many titles have you won?
PERCIVAL CORDWELL: I really can't tell you. I would have to go look on some book or some paper to tell you how many titles because we've been winning titles from as early as '85-86 when we won the knockout. I've lost track of the titles that Holy Family win because Holy Family win one year , either '90 or '91 ... for that one year we won four titles.
We were trying to figure that out already and someone even mentioned the year when we used the little girl, Shanique Campbell, she was the captain and we won two titles. But it's not something that we jot down and I really don't remember.
Q: What caused you to use the girl, Shanique, on the boys team and as captain too?
PC: What happened with the girl child coming into the football is that we had three little girl child who just come and say them want to play the football. You have a little one we call 'Ratty' who used to live somewhere near Matthews Lane and a little one name Tarita, Tarita Gordon.
Those two girls migrate now and I believe the next time we see them they may be on a US team. The other one was Punky, Shanique Mitchell. In this year now we had some indiscipline with the captain, the captain gone to KFC to celebrate birthday with somebody and we leave him off the team.
The only senior player who was there was 'Punky' and she said 'come warm-up, come stretch, coach we ready you know'. She is that type of person, she has leadership qualities so when the people them used to question and say 'how come a girl a captain a boys' team' them wouldn't know.
Q: You've won so many titles, is there anything special about this one?
PC: This victory, it wasn't really a special victory, because most of the people have it down that Holy Family would have won this. We looked at the teams and we know from the start that we could beat any one of the teams them. From the first match we played in the National Stadium and beat Alpha 7-0 we sent a warning to the other teams to say don't just get up a day and play football. Train to play football, teach the youth them the rules of the game about what them can do and can't do and it showed against Holy Family. We played teams which looked like is lie down them lie down and we a jump over hurdles.
Q: Who are some of the players who you have coached who have gone on to a high level?
PC: Jermaine Johnson, Teddy, Claude Davis. Them make and groom right there say in a Rae Town and go through our hand. Added to that is like Kasai Hinds (Tivoli Gardens captain), his brother Christopher Jackson, who also play for Tivoli, Kevin King who plays for Harbour View and a lot more players, Amos Israel, Trevor Spencer, who is now a coach in the US who come through Holy Family and the Rae Town system. We could go on and on and on and on until this tape run out, just to call them name.
Q: Given the violence sometimes, how much of a difference has football made in the lives of a number of these players whom you've coached?
PC: Suppose you never have youth like that in a football programme, him woulda dead 10 years ago or him woulda kill 10 people. So this have a big, big impact on the life of a lot of these youngsters and especially the community.
Look at the wars with community and adjoining community, a footballer from community A can walk across to community B without a man a say all that boy de shouldn't. You know this is football, football make a trodding for a whole heap of youth.
Q: What sort of satisfaction do you get, knowing that you've made such an impact on the lives of so many youth?
PC: I reached 60 October gone. I go all 'bout and I never get any disrespect from anyone. Is football do that. I feel excellent to know say that I touch the life of the youths. I truly feel good about that. What we do coach for? For love, for money? I really coulda say without football I woulda gone already. Football and water is the same thing. Water is life, football is life. If it wasn't for football a whole heap of these youths woulda dead already. In the holidays we have holiday training, you know what we keep them from? We keep them from gang war, drugs, gun-related crime, so I'm satisfied with what I a do right now.
- Audley Boyd
