‘I love Old Harbour dearly’ | Former football coach Christopher Dunn talks about Old Harbour and why he quits the sport

The school had just attained high school status and was now task with replicating their sporting dominance from the second-tier secondary school sport competitions.

This all happened at a time when the education system was going through a rapid period of transformation that encapsulates all facets including sport and other extra-curricular.

Dunn, too, was going through his own transformation as well. He had just graduated from GC Foster College of Physical Education and Sport and was only 22 years old when he secured his first job at 33 South Street. It was the ideal start to adulthood for the Highgate, St Mary native, who was eager to impart his knowledge to a group of prodigious talents in his care.

During seven years as head coach of the daCosta Cup team the St Mary’s High old boy developed a romance for the beautiful game, Old Harbour High and the community as a whole. By the time he immigrated to the United States in 1996 Old Harbour High, operating with less resources and having their best players frequently poached from them by the ‘bigger’ teams, had earned the respect of their more fancied and traditional foes.

This he was able to accomplish through meticulous work and attention to detail, enhanced further by his participation in an Adidas coaching course in Winchester, England. One could easily see Dunn’s coaching methods in the way he would set up his teams in matches even though the big prizes eluded him. In only his second season in charge as head coach, Dunn had grabbed the attention of the Inter-Secondary School Sports Association (ISSA), the governing body for sports for high schools. He was drafted by ISSA as a member of the coaching staff for the daCosta Cup All Stars squad assembled that year and headed by the respected Emerson ‘Diggy’ Henry, coach of many times champions Rusea’s. Two youth teams from Brazil were here on special invitation and a series of matches were organized against their peers from rural and urban Jamaica. During their stay in the Caribbean the Brazilians staged a few coaching sessions. It was an opportunity that Dunn, a die-hearted fan of Brazilian football, was delighted to be a part of, as he soaked up all the vital information served by men from the land of joga bonito.

By this time Dunn had made Old Harbour into a perennial dark horse, one capable of upsetting the applecart but would always struggle to get beyond the second round. He wasn’t under any pressure to deliver major trophies though, as he was a regular class teacher just like everyone else and had to juggle teaching biology to lower school students and expectedly Physical Education (PE). By now Dunn was a popular figure beyond the school walls, his demeanor and likeable personality had just about everyone warming to him. Undoubtedly he was one of the most recognised faces wherever he went throughout a town of some 25,000 inhabitants at the time.

Many parents, vendors, taxi drivers developed a bond of mutual respect towards Dunn, who could do no wrong in their eyes.

It, therefore, came as shock to the school and wider community when news broke that Dunn was quitting Old Harbour. Life at the time was good for this young man, who lived at a rented property in Bannister. Back then, he and other young teachers like Kirk Bailey, Dave Lindo, Tony Clarke and others, would spend hours lyming on the weekend discussing sports among topics of interest. Those long debates would segue into much broader topics like marriage and family that lasted just as long. Dunn eventually jumped the broom with his then girlfriend, but quickly discovered that this new and dynamic arena he was entering presented tougher challenges than that of being a football coach.

Being a husband before age 30 he soon realized that his small salary as a teacher wasn’t enough, and hence went in search of greener pastures overseas. 

Living in New York

When the young couple arrived in New York they found life just as challenging like in Jamaica, as adapting to their new environment proved easier said than done. Dunn also had to make further adjustments to their day-to-day life of taking care of four children – all born within a 12-year period. Within those 12 years he was in his third major job, none related to coaching or teaching.

“I worked with Elmont High as a substitute teacher and coach but I didn’t like the competition,” Dunn told Old Harbour News.

Perhaps if he had tough it out as they would say, the world might have heard about him. Instead he chose another path that took him farther away from his first true love: that of being a football coach.

“In terms of teaching maybe that wasn’t my real love. Coaching was my real love. So I had the opportunity to work in the school system here, but the kids in this school system are not as disciplined as the ones back home. They don’t understand what it is to come to school and learn and I must admit that Jamaican kids are 100% more disciplined than these guys over here,” he said.

“When you get married and start having kids they’re certain responsibilities that have to be taken. I love my kids dearly but if I didn’t have the kids I could have done something much better in terms of the game. When you leave Jamaica you had to start all over again and I just didn’t want to forsake my family and just pursue my goals. I know if I had pursued it I would have been one of the top coaches right now in the US based on my knowledge but I didn’t want to gamble my family’s future,” he added. “At the end of the day it’s never about you, nor money, your interests, it’s about your kids, your family.”

All this time during his travails in New York, Dunn kept tabs on what was happening in Old Harbour, particularly the daCosta Cup team. And so when Old Harbour High won the 2002 Ben Francis Cup – which remains its biggest football triumph in history – Dunn was one of the most excited persons on the planet even though he was thousands of miles away and didn’t witness a feat he himself would have dreamt of. Fittingly, it was Bill ‘Big Johnny’ Martin who guided the team to the historic achievement.

“I called Bill the next day,” Dunn said in an exciting tone as if the event had just occurred. “Bill was my coach when I was playing for South Street, so I have a lot of respect for Bill. Bill normally keeps me abreast on how the season is going. My only regret I said is that ‘why I wasn’t in Jamaica to experience that?’ Not necessarily as the coach but with that whole vibe in winning the competition. I still talk about it even now. But I give Bill a lot of credit.”

Such a moment brought a lot of nostalgia with it for Dunn who envisaged himself back in the late 80s taking Old Harbour to the pinnacle of schoolboy football and becoming a national coach for his country.

When he got the job at Old Harbour he was surrounded by experienced men in Leroy Henry, Standford Hudson and Clifford Grandstand, who had guided the school to multiple national titles. For many persons going into such a situation the expectation alone would be a massive burden on their shoulders. But not for Dunn.

“It was a pressure that motivates me,” he said. “It was that type of pressure if you want to use the word pressure. A pressure in the sense that you want to achieve, you want to play amongst the big boys, the top coaches.”

Going to Old Harbour High they were getting someone who was averse with the modern way the game is played at the time.

Dunn said: “So I was rounded in terms of having knowledge of systems and how systems are played and the reasons for you playing a particular system.”

However, not having the right tools and your best players proved challenging. The school had to contend with losing their best cadre of players every season. September 1988 was a watershed moment for the institution. The football season was delayed following the passage of Hurricane Gilbert, but it was also the year Old Harbour became a high school. There was a lot of pre-season talk ahead of the start of the daCosta Cup, the premier schoolboy football competition for rural area schools. But hopes of making a big statement on debut had to be tempered following summer departures of Linval ‘Rudy’ Dixon and Paul Tugman to Clarendon Clarendon College; Richard ‘Babe’ Ford to St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) and Delroy ‘Prophet’ Morgan to Vere Technical.

Seeing his best players leaving for more established teams, Dunn said: “I truly would have loved for these guys to stay but I truly understand the rationale for them leaving.

“What I’m happy about is in their formative years at least I got a chance to work with them, influence them, mold them into the player they are when they leave and go to these [schools].”

“As a young coach your expectations is always high, but reality sets in quickly,” he adds.

“My thing was to test the waters… but after the first season making it through to the second round I realize that the competition wasn’t as tough as I thought.”

He recalled how they were all a bunch of nerves when they hosted Dinthill Technical for the first time, and were hammered 5-0.

That scoreline wasn’t evidence of a gulf in class between the teams, he pointed out, but rather the mental effects of being on the same field with an elite group and many time champions.

“We look back at the game and realize that in terms of playing style, in terms of man-to-man ability they weren’t greater than us,” he recounted. “So we realize it is a psychological thing and if we can get these guys psyche going and let them understand that it’s a game and we’re just as equal in terms of talent as these guys we’ll do well. So we psyche up for the second game and we went to Dinthill and we beat them 2-1. And from that year onwards we went up in terms of performance.”

The football programme led by Dunn was now a well-oiled conveyor belt, churning out talents like Donovan ‘Muscles’ Scott, Glenroy ‘Laabi’ Levy, Sheldon ‘Shabba’ Bloomfield, Ricardo ‘Ambrose’ Knight, Errol ‘Yellow’ Wilkie, Omar ‘Goosey’ Stewart and many, many more. With these players, some persons believed Dunn had a championship squad capable of challenging for the daCosta Cup crown. But in the eyes of this astute coach winning must not be the sole objective that one should be judged.

“When you lay on the blackboard the roles of these players, how you want them play a particular system and these guys play the system to the T, to me that’s achievement for me,” he noted.

But this exciting chapter in the life of the charismatic figure now belongs to the history books where one can only imagine what if. 

Reunion

These days he reminisces about his time back in the days with his old teaching mates and also his past students whom he has reunited with through technology.

Together they run a charity named Family for Life that provides support to former schoolmates and teachers who are struggling. Dunn sees the initiative as his way of giving back to a community of people who welcomed him with open arms and treated him like their very own.

“It’s totally mind-blowing that after thirty-odd years I can rekindle and talk back to some of these guys. Some of these guys I only could remember them by their aliases. But now I’m meeting them back I know their first and last names. And although some of these guys are in their 40s and 50s they still show me the same respect. I still feel like I’m in my 20s and they’re still in their teens and that’s the kind of relationship we had,” said the 57-year-old coach. 

“This platform let me reflect how happy life can be and the happiness comes from them expressing the things I have taught them. That makes me happy and proud that I am a part of that process for them to say to me I have made them into a better person.”

Due to work and family commitments, trips to his home country are few and far between. He hasn’t been to this side of the island in ages, he admits but there’s no denying that Old Harbour holds a special place in his heart.

“I say it every day, if I have the opportunity to come back to Jamaica I would live in Old Harbour,” he tells me with more than bout of glee in his voice. “My identity was cultured in Old Harbour. I love the people, like the energy, I like the vibe. My first real job was in Old Harbour, my first real girlfriend is in Old Harbour. My heart and DNA is in Old Harbour. There’s no other town I could live and feel the energy and the love. I love Old Harbour dearly.”

With his youngest child being 10 years old, is he willing to try coaching again, I asked him.

“When you get married and think about having kids you have to make some strong decisions in your life and maybe that’s one of the reasons why I still love the game, wish I was still there coaching the game, love to work with students, but a time comes in your life when you getting older, you got to provide for your family,” said Dunn, who works an emergency medical technician (EMT) with the New York Fire Department going 14 years now.

He gets that feeling of wanting to get back into the rhythm of barking instructions from the touchline and outlining game strategies on a board. And perhaps that feeling will never go away. The battle within one’s mind and heart of pursuing your passion versus taking total responsibility for an act of your own doing would certainly split opinions. But no one would dear argue that Dunn made the wrong decision to focus on his family.