Historic all-woman coaching unit backs U15 talent

HEAD COACH of Jamaica’s under-15 girls football team, Tashana Vincent, is banking on the talent of her charges and her coaching to get them over the challenge of truncated preparation for the upcoming Concacaf Girls U15 Championship.

The Young Reggae Girlz will be one of 32 countries to take part in the competition, slated for Tampa, Florida, from July 31 to August 7.

Vincent said the 27 girls on the team are naturally talented but their passion for football will have to be better nurtured.

“With all things considered and the girls being inactive for the better part of two years, I think their fitness is okay (but) as it relates to international football, it’s definitely not where it should be,” she said.

That being said, Vincent has no predictions about how well the girls will do but promises the country the best effort possible.

“I don’t have any (predictions) right now and I don’t want to make any because I don’t want to create unrealistic expectations. I don’t want to say that ‘we’re going to do well’ and put added pressure on the females, and I don’t want to say ‘no, we are not going to do well’ and then my players think we don’t believe in them,” Vincent said.

“We just want the country to know that we are just going to go out there and perform to the best of our ability and to see how best we can come out of that tournament.”

Assistant coach Alicia James said although the pandemic has affected the girls’ fitness, she thinks this is a great opportunity to further develop their football skills.

“I think this is the level that we should put most of the focus on if we want to improve football in Jamaica because if you have kids at this level who are interested in football and we could spend more time on developing these players, they will be the same players that would populate the senior national teams,” James said.

Vincent agrees with James and said developing players at the grassroots level is paramount.

She said instilling good practices in players from an early age will help to eliminate simple, yet all too common mistakes and foster better results later on.

The Jamaican players are all locally based with 14 players from Kingston and St Andrew, three from Clarendon, two from Portland, Trelawny, St Catherine and St Thomas and one each from St James and Westmoreland.

Jamaica will be playing in League A, which includes Canada, Costa Rica, Haiti, Mexico, Puerto Rico, United States and a guest nation.