David “Wagga” Robin Hunt, the co-founder, technical director, and president of Meadhaven United Football Club, and coach of Calabar High School Manning Cup team, died on October 26, 2007 at his home in Meadowbrook of an apparent heart attack. He was fifty-one.
Hunt, a Kingston College High School (“KC”) and University of the West Indies graduate, was a former national coach of the Jamaica Under-17 football team and General Secretary of the Kingston and St. Andrew Football Association (“KSAFA”). He enjoyed phenomenal coaching success in youth football at the club, school and national level. Under his guidance, Meadhaven, a club he founded along with the late David “Bogo” Haughton and long-time friend, Dr. Alvin Lue, enjoyed unprecedented success including simultaneously holding all 5 KSAFA youth titles. At the school level, he piloted Calabar to both the Manning Cup title - after a thirty-year drought - and to their first ever Oliver Shield. In a final and touching tribute to their late coach, Calabar also won the Walker Cup shortly after his death. He narrowly missed taking the Jamaican Under-17 team to the Youth World Cup but in the process had wins over perennial CONCACAF powerhouses, Mexico and the United States. The victory over the United States was the first and only win by a Jamaican football team at any age level against their colossal neighbor to the north.
Amid hugs and tears, interspersed with fond memories and laughter, scores of people
gathered at his home on Flemington Drive, which the Hunt family has graciously opened to so many youths for over thirty years. Friends of the family, current and former Meadhaven and Calabar players, KC and Calabar Old Boys, former members of the Taylor Hall dorm at the University of the West Indies, members of Pelicans Football Club, members of the broader football fraternity, and people from all walks of life, who may not have personally known him but knew of his life’s work, all converged to reflect on his life and to extend condolences. Indeed, news of his death shocked the country and reverberated throughout the Jamaican community in North America. Many compared his untimely passing to the tragic deaths of football coaches, Jackie Bell and Dennis Zadie, who died in a bus accident in Mexico while attending the 1986 World Cup.
However, for those who knew him, Hunt was far more than just an exceptional football coach. As a member of the first Meadhaven Minor League football team in 1978, this writer, along with fellow team-mates in attendance, Michael Ballin, Gary “Mad Cap” Steadman, Albert “Johnny Pecker” Ashley, Ira Turner, Mark “Oscar” Stafford, Michael Dyche, Christopher “Bye Bye” Senior, Bunny Blake, Cornel “Runky” Spence, Ever “Little Ever” Barnett, and his youngest brother, Christopher “Tready” Hunt, can personally attest to the role he played in our lives as mentor, role model, surrogate father, and adviser. Far from simply being a highly skilled tactician with a keen analytical mind, “Coach” or “Mr. Hunt” as many of us called him, unbeknownst to us, was using football as a tool to instill in us the valuable life lessons of discipline, hard work, goal-setting, determination, self-respect, and respect for others. He was a self-actualized individual whose extraordinary intellect, maturity, leadership, charisma and vision belied his age (in retrospect, he was only 5 or 6 years older than us, but at the time seemed like a father figure to us).
“He created men who went on from under his wings to lead wonderful, meaningful, outstanding lives while leading their family the way he taught them to lead on the field. He will be missed by many at home and abroad, young and old, and football players and football fans,” said Ira Turner, a member of the original Meadhaven Minor League team and one of the many players whose life Hunt molded. Hunt was instrumental in getting Turner enrolled at Meadowbrook High School where Turner excelled and, as in the case of this writer, later secured a football scholarship in the United States.
What is also noteworthy was his total disregard for the superficial barrier of class as evidenced by his embrace of at-risk youths from challenging communities adjacent to Meadowbrook and Havendale. In addition, he remained apolitical amid the violence caused by political partisanship which continues to plague the island. As a player, you always felt that he had your personal well-being at heart which extended beyond football and included your academic performance and family life. This sentiment was expressed time and time again by both current and former players. Moreover, although a diehard KC Old Boy, he looked beyond petty high school rivalry and, in the best interest of the development of youth football, accepted the role as coach of Calabar.
The whole atmosphere was akin to a reunion except the underlying rationale for the reunion was shrouded in sadness. As we reminisced, it was hard to believe that nearly thirty years had passed so quickly. It seemed like just yesterday we were carefree teenagers consumed by the love of football. Now we are middle-aged men, some with grown children. With his passing, it was difficult not to reflect on our own mortality. He clearly knew and pursued his life mission and left a lasting legacy. But what is our life mission and what will be our legacy after we are gone?
KC schoolmate, Dr. Ivor Nugent, remembers Hunt as a bright and affable student and an outstanding chess player. In fact, Hunt captained the KC chess team and represented Jamaica at the Chess Olympiad in Venezuela in 1976. His close friend, Dr. Alvin Lue, remembers him as a caring, honest, selfless and passionate person who pursued his life mission in spite of his detractors. The day after his death, a Jamaican newspaper article, accompanied by an unflattering picture showing a dejected looking Hunt, claimed that he had an intensity for the game “bordering on the unhealthy.” However, intensity is common among coaches in any sport at any level and, in the absence of any evidence of a causal link between his death and his passion for the game, the article’s implication of a nexus between the two is both irresponsible and insensitive.
“It is a huge loss for the family, the community, and the country,” said legendary football coach, Winston Chung-Fah who, along with former KC Manning Cup coach, George Thompson, was Hunt’s coaching mentor. Indeed, a massive void now exists at Meadhaven as he was the driving force behind the club and effortlessly managed the herculean task of providing both technical and managerial expertise to the club (he had a master’s degree in Business Administration and completed the prestigious English FA International Coaching Preliminary course). Going forward, it would appear that a collective club effort will be needed to fill the larger-than-life footprints which he has left. Nevertheless, the club, its supporters and former players, the Hunt family, and friends are determined to keep Hunt’s life mission and memory alive.
In a fitting farewell, hundreds of people including former Jamaica Prime Minister, Edward Seaga, Jamaica Football Federation president, Captain Horace Burrell, and former national coach, Bora Mulutinovich, attended his funeral on November 8 at the Meadowbrook United Church. The outpouring of affection for Hunt and empathy for his family reflected at his funeral is testament to the commitment to service, selflessness, and integrity to which he devoted his life. As we drove together to the internment at Dovecot Memorial Park, former Meadhaven, Jamaica national and Miami Fusion player, Roger Thomas, aptly summed up Hunt’s impact on many of our lives: “He gave us a vision when we did not have a vision.” While he is no longer physically with us, his memory and his values will forever live on in our hearts.
However, no matter how much we as former or current players, schoolmates or friends loved and miss him, our loss cannot be compared to the loss his family has experienced. For them, his death is not the loss of a football icon. Instead, it is the loss of a treasured son, a loving husband, a doting father, a beloved brother, an adoring uncle, a special nephew, and a fond cousin. We thank his immediate family which includes his mother, Mrs. Normadelle Hunt; his wife, Georgette; his daughter, Amira; his sister, Sheryl; and his brothers, Garth, Paul and Christopher for sharing the life of David “Wagga” Robin Hunt with us. By making the inevitable sacrifice required to support his life mission of service to the community and to the nation, you have immeasurably enriched our collective lives.
