Pepper adds spice to coaching
Hard work and passion can eclipse the best, says Alex United’s Tracy-Lee
AWELDER fixing one of the stadiums at Edenvale Sports Club was a hit with his helmet on Wednesday after Alexandra United finished training at 11.30am.
He lent the eager players his helmet so they could look at the partial eclipse that covered 40 percent of the sun in Joburg without hurting their eyes. The eclipse was a spectacular sight, just like the dedication shown by the players during a training session on a hot first day of spring. Tracy-Lee Pepper, United’s coach,
watched with pride from the sidelines the group of players who are looking to give Alex a team in the first division by gaining promotion from the ABC Motsepe League and make up for their near-misses of the last two seasons.
T h at ’s the i mmediate goal for the 52-year-old coach, but she also has her sights set on a bright future that would blind you if you stared at it directly without protecting your eyes.
“I hate to differentiate between male and female players because football is football,” Pepper said.
“If you’re a man or a woman, the challenges are the same. It’s a resultsbased game. Fans and management want results.
“As a woman, to be able to coach at the highest level in the country, the PSL, whether I am the assistant or have the privilege of being the head coach, that would be my greatest achievement. Then obviously being the head coach of the national team would be great. I have worked hard to get to where I am.”
Pepper holds Safa Level III, Caf A and German A and B licences but that hasn’t translated into her being respected. She wasn’t invited by Safa as part of the 28 women who took part in the Fifa coaching course that ran from Monday to yesterday. This is despite her being higher qualified than some of the coaches present.
Safa, however, sent her on a coaching course in Germany in 2011, and when she impressed them the German federation invited her for a further three-week course. But she wasn’t roped into the Safa set-up after that. “I look at it and ask, ‘how does this system work?’ There are coaches who have jumped over you having done less work than you, putting in less effort and fewer hours than you. “But I also believe things happen for a reason. My time will come. I don’t believe hard work can ever be ignored. I also believe that a lack of hard work will eventually be exposed. “There are no short-cuts to success. There is a saying that, ‘it took me 10 years to be an overnight success’,” Pepper said. Close to 3 kiolmetres separate Hurlyvale Primary, where Pepper started her coaching career when her daughter was still schooling there by just helping out, and the Edenvale Sports Club where she now leads a men’s side that’s one division away from the professional ranks. Her journey to get there has been long and hard. She has been sworn at and told to return to the kitchen. In January she had a section of United fans baying for her blood, threatening to physically remove her from her post if she didn’t resign. The club were second on the log with 19 matches to go when that happened. She kept her cool. “Sometimes silence is more powerful than words,” Pepper said. “There is a saying that, ‘the wise stay silent while fools speak’. I choose my words wisely and let the fools speak.” Response from Fran Hilton-Smith, Safa’s technical director of women's football:
On the criteria used to select the 28 coaches for the Fifa women’s coaching course:
“Eleven of the coaches we took there are former and current Banyana Banyana players. We took the likes of Janine van Wyk, Shorty (Simphiwe Dludlu), Desiree Ellis and Maud Khumalo. They can help develop the game in the region as selectors and scouts. Ninety percent of the coaches have CAF Level A licences. We are at a point where we are pretty close to having a South African coach to lead Banyana Banyana.”
On allegations that friends were picked over qualified people:
“I disagree with that. The coaches we took are qualified and can take South African football higher.”