Gordon Williams, Contributor

Graham

On a Saturday afternoon last January, Raymond 'K.C.' Graham was dressed in sneakers and T-shirt, warmed by Jamaica's sunshine while watching young athletes perform in front of familiar faces.

'Champs' was still months away but the start of the local track and field season always peaked Graham's anticipation of the fierce high school rivalries to come. As the coach of St. Jago's girls, it fueled his excitement.

Roll forward one year. Graham is at a college campus in Virginia, United States, where dipping temperatures bring snow piles and turn ponds into ice skating rinks. Even on a better day, last Saturday, chilling winds still bundle him into layers of clothing.

Graham has been an assistant coach at Hampton University for a few months but still sees more strangers than friends each day. Yet, he is happy and adjusted.

"I'm in the cold," Graham said with a laugh, following a training session with female sprinters and hurdlers he coaches. "I knew before I came it would be a challenge but I am ready for it."

While Graham admitted to missing the "Jamaica high school thing", which consumed him for close to 25 years as a highly successful coach at Camperdown and St. Jago, where his charges won four straight Girls Champs titles in the late 1990s, he claimed his energies are with Hampton's "Lady Pirates".

"To be honest, I still have that interest," Graham explained while discussing Jamaica's track season. "I miss the Jamaica meets, the rivalry, but I have to tell myself that I have to focus on the task here. I have to let that go. It's gonna be hard, but I try my best not to be taken up with that."

TOUGH CALL

Leaving Jamaica was a tough decision. As a national coach, Graham worked many junior and senior international meets, including six consecutive World Championships of Athletics and two Olympic Games.

At school, he helped to jump-start the careers of top performers like Kenia Sinclair, Kerron Stewart, Delloreen Ennis-London and Melanie Walker. Nine women from Jamaica's 2007 World Championships team were coached by Graham at St. Jago.

He understood that going overseas could limit his opportunities in the national programme. Furthermore, while the St. Jago job was always his to lose, Hampton offered limited guarantees. Graham's extensive resumlooks impressive on Hampton's website, but his one-year contract says he is still under the microscope.

Before and after taking the Hampton job, Graham has sought counsel from experienced sources, including longtime Jamaican friend Victor "Poppy" Thomas, a former St. Andrew Technical High coach now in charge at Lincoln University in Missouri.

"I asked him for his advice and he helped me to prepare," Graham said. "Others were helpful too."

Thomas said his suggestions to Graham, including tips on recruiting rules and loyalty, were straightforward.

"You have to show college kids more respect because they are young adults," he explained. "You can't treat them like high school kids."

After surviving largely on a teacher's salary - Graham described high school coaching in Jamaica as "more like a volunteer thing" - he liked the improved pay and benefits offered at Hampton. The better training facilities impressed him too. An he is no longer a head coach, he welcomed the opportunity to concentrate on, well, coaching.

"It's a new situation for me," Graham said of his new job. "At St. Jago and Camperdown I call all the shots as head coach. I do everything. Here I'm an assistant, but I get to specialise, to utilise my talents.

"At St. Jago and Camperdown I'm in charge of 50-odd athletes. Here I'm coaching like seven athletes. I get more time with them and I can get more from them. I'm enjoying it."

It would help, Thomas offered, if Graham also shows loyalty to Maurice Pierce, who is in charge of Hampton's track and field programme.

"He (Graham) is not the boss anymore," Thomas said. "He has to listen to the head coach who runs things."

Graham admitted that by leaving Jamaica he no longer oversees the development of some of the best young athletic talent in the world. The thrill of shaping potential world-beaters, even from their pre-teens, is unmatched. Yet he relishes the chance to contribute at Hampton.

The "Lady Pirates" compete in Division I collegiate athletics, dominating the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference. They are ranked 21st nationally this season, but are rarely at the finish line alongside top ranked universities like Louisiana State, Arizona State, Tennessee and Michigan.

In collegiate athletics recruiting is key, and Graham is Hampton's link to Caribbean and Central American talent, especially Jamaica's.

Currently, the "Lady Pirates" have only one Jamaican, former St. Jago and G.C. Foster 400-metres hurdler Tashana Willock. But Graham, who claimed to have helped more than 50 Jamaicans get track and field scholarships in the U.S., is hoping to stock his programme.

"In future I hope to recruit several more Jamaicans," he said, offering a reason to be at Champs.

DIFFERENCE

U.S. college track and field is split into two definitive seasons - indoor and outdoor - the main difference Graham believes he must adapt to. His immediate test is indoors, a season in progress with regular weekend meets. It concludes with the national championships in March, where Graham wants to make an early mark. He has high hopes for two hurdlers in his camp - who he declined to name but thinks can do really well at the nationals.

"That's the target," he said. "They have a chance."

In time, Graham is confident his coaching skills will cement his place at Hampton. Either way, there were no more major hurdles to clear back home.

"Over the years, track and field-wise, I have achieved what I wanted in Jamaica," Graham explained. "It was time to move on. I needed a different challenge."

He, along with former Kingston College coach Lennox Graham, have made the leap to U.S. college coaching this season, joining Thomas and a handful of other Jamaicans. For "K.C." Graham, the move has landed him in a place where the differences - weather and cultural - can sometimes wipe the sunny disposition from any Jamaican's face. Thomas believes patience is the best way for Graham to proceed.

"The easiest way to cope is to sit back and learn," he said.

"K.C." Graham accepts that. And despite leaving a proven record behind in local high school track and field, he doesn't feel he's back to square one at Hampton.

"I don't think of it as starting over," he said. "I just think of it as a continuity at a different level and hopefully I can transfer the success I had in Jamaica here."

Even if he can't do the same with the warmth of Saturdays in January.

-Gordon Williams is a Jamaican journalist based in the United States.