Nahki Wells

looks back at his past sporting IDOLS and MENTORS

Growing up, Nahki Wells could think of nothing he wanted more than to be a professional footballer. He’d see international stars like Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo hitting their stride on the field and dreamed of one day playing against them. His real impetus came, however, from seeing local giants – Shaun Goater, David Bascome and Kyle Lightbourne – make a name for themselves beyond Bermuda, proving that anything is possible with hard work, determination and a healthy dose of talent.

“Shaun Goater was someone I really looked up to as a kid,” Wells said. “He was the one I saw break into the elite level of football. We all wanted to be him. I remember watching him play with Manchester United and Manchester City in the Premier League and even go on to score in those games, which solidified him as a legend. Growing up, that was every footballers’ dream to witness someone you could relate to, that was one of your people, doing it.” He admits it gave him “real hope” that he could also accomplish incredible things in professional sport. “From Shaun’s example, I saw that it really is possible if you believe in yourself and do everything in your power to get there.”

These days the shoe is on the other foot for the 29-year-old Bermudian. As a forward for Queens Park Rangers, on loan from Premier League club Burnley, Wells is humbled by the hundreds of local young people who look up to him for motivation. “It’s a great feeling knowing that you’ve inspired someone else,” he said. “However, it also comes with a weight of responsibility. You always feel like you need to be as professional as possible, to lead by example and put Bermuda on the map.”

That’s why I want
my career to be
about something bigger
than just myself

Wells tries to enjoy each moment he gets on the field, especially considering his professional career can’t – and won’t – last forever.
“That’s why I want my career to be about something bigger than just myself,” he said. “I have big plans to start my own foundation in the future to provide opportunities for young people interested in following a similar path.” In the meantime, when he’s on Island, he makes a point to speak to children at schools and sporting clubs, painting a realistic picture of what it takes to turn a love for football into a professional career.

“It’s not an easy road,” he said. “It takes a lot of hard work, dedication and guidance to follow this path. My parents [Michael Wells and Elizabeth Simmons] had to believe in my talents, be relentless about my ability and make contacts with the right people to get my foot in the door at a young age.” Though he started playing football at age five, Wells admits his “head wasn’t in the game” until reaching age 15. “It’s important to understand as a young Bermudian aspiring to be a professional footballer the amount of research and support required from my dad and other knowledgeable football influencers [like coaches Kenny Thompson and Scott Morton] who had the vision for my career path,” he said. “They understood what the right opportunities were and kept me on track. At such a young age, you can’t be expected to understand it all, that’s why the support from the community and my role models was vital.”

This article was originally published in the Winter 2019 edition of RG Magazine.

The post Living the dream appeared first on RG Magazines.

Before they jet off to the Concacaf Gold Cup, the locally based players of the Bermuda National Football Team define the undefined in summer fashion.

On and off the pitch these men show exactly why this summer is OH SO HOT!

Art Direction & Styling – Karlandra Smith @karlandra11 & Kevin Smith @kces_

Photographer – Alex Masters @ambda

Makeup Artist – Raél Iman @iman.artistry

Models – Jaylon Bather @itsyaboyjay9,  Donte Brangman @dbb.7, Casey Castle @_22castle, Justin Donawa @jdonawa14, Dale Eve @rtd.95, Na’eem Griff @naeem_griff, Jahquil Hill @_j.k.hill_, Tre Ming @boxheada_r, and Lejaun Simmons @lps_yolo

Model: Lejuan, Shirt: Choices Menswear, Pants and Sandals: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Jahquil, Shirt and Shorts: Choices Menswear, Sunglasses: Argus Optical, Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Jaylon, Shirt, Belt and Bag: Lusso, Pants: English Sports Shop, Sunglasses: Argus Optical, Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop, Slides: MenCo

Model: Justin, Shirt, Pants and Sandals: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Argus Optical

Model: Jahquil, Shirt and Shorts: Marks & Spencer, Slides: Lusso, Socks: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Argus Optical, Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Justin, Shirt, Pants and Sandals: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Argus Optical

Model: Lejuan, Shirt and Shorts:Gibbons Company, Slides: Lusso, Sunglasses: Argus Optical

Model: Tre, Shirt: Lusso, Shorts: English Sports Shop, Sunglasses: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Casey, Shirt and Shorts: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Argus Optical, Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Donte, Shirt and Pants: Choices Menswear, Sunglasses: Argus Optical

Model: Na’eem, Shirt and shorts: Choices Menswear, socks: Gibbons Company, sunglasses: Argus Optical

Model: Casey, Shirt and Shorts: Gibbons Company, Sunglasses: Argus Optical, Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Dale, Shirt, Belt and Bag: Lusso, Pants: English Sports Shop, Sunglasses and Watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop

Model: Jaylon, Shirt, pants and slides: Lusso, sunglasses and watch: Sunglass and Watch Shop   

Model: Tre, Shirt and Pants: Choices Menswear, Trainers: Lusso, Sunglasses: Argus Optical

All denim wear Gibbons Company
All hats Accessory Box
Scarfs worn by Lejuan, Dale, and Justin Urban Cottage
Scarf worn by Jaylon Gibbons Company

This shoot was originally published in the 2019 edition of the RG Summer Magazine

The post Fashion: Defining the Undefined appeared first on RG Magazines.

Photography by Akil Simmons

Mark Wade, president of the Bermuda Football Association, is in no doubt about the significant role that football plays in Bermudian culture. For men and women, for girls and boys, the sport is an integral part of the cultural milieu.

“It’s the first sport that most kids play – it was for me,” says the former player with Pembroke-Hamilton Club (PHC). “I played in kickarounds at school, and in the neighbourhood before I joined PHC at age 14.

“We even used to call part of my yard ‘Wembley’,” he says, referring to the iconic English stadium. “Football is the biggest sport in the world, and it is the biggest in Bermuda, too.”

The numbers support that view

The BFA’s most recent strategic planning exercise pulled together figures that demonstrate the vital role that football plays in Bermuda. For example:

• The BFA organises some 2,500 matches annually involving more than 3,000 registered players over a 32-week season that runs from September to April.
• Some 47 male senior teams and 95 male youth teams, are registered with the BFA for the current season, and there is an active – and growing – level of participation among girls ages 6-17. Most encouraging for the future of girls’ football was Bermuda’s Division Two championship at the Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football (CONCACAF) under-15 girls’ tournament in August.
• Some 30 nationally registered referees participate in an average of three matches or training sessions weekly.
• More than 300 BFA and club administrators contribute approximately four hours per week to football. That translates to 1,200 hours per week, and 38,400 hours per season.

The BFA reckons that, together,

administrators, referees, players, coaches, and spectators, contribute nearly four million hours of football activity annually in Bermuda.

“Four million hours is actually on the low side,” Wade says. “That’s only for football under the BFA umbrella. That’s the bulk of it, but there are players in our sister leagues – the Corona League and Sunday Morning League that are independent of the BFA – and then there are the pick-up games, the kickarounds in neighbourhoods, kids playing at primary school and middle school. To say that football is an integral part of life in Bermuda is understating it.”

David Sabir, the BFA general secretary, heads up the organisation’s day-to-day operations.”This is how important football is generally,” Sabir says. “Football is almost embedded in our DNA. Before a baby is born, mothers would often say ‘I can feel my baby kicking!’ This is an exciting moment! Emotional moment! This is football! The expectations that we place on football, the core values of respect, fair play, teamwork, commitment, dedication, integrity, etc. is what we desire in life generally.

Football is a game of life!

For a select few, the sport has offered a career path – as the current season began, Bermudians were playing at professional clubs in England, Spain, Holland, Iceland, Sweden, Finland, Estonia and the United States.

Many more go away to US prep schools, and then perhaps on to university, on scholarship.

Twins Richard and Robert Calderon have been helping players to obtain scholarships to American high schools for some 20 years. In that time, Richard – a former president of the BFA – says that they have helped 48 student-athletes acquire scholarships with a total value in the millions of dollars.

“I would never suggest that someone should not pursue a professional footballing career,” Richard says, “but the more realistic and safer goal is to use football as a means to a college education. My brother and I are tangible evidence that it works as we both attended prep school in the US, and then the University of Alabama, on scholarships. Today, a significant percentage of players who are doing well in football in Bermuda have partially developed at the prep school and college level.”

Many of those players eventually return home and find that the US college game is excellent preparation for life on and off the field in Bermuda.

“The qualities that make someone a good footballer – teamwork, respect, fair play and co-operation – are also the qualities that employers look for in the workplace,” says Wade, who has spent his career in the telecommunications field.

Of course, there is also a commercial angle to football in Bermuda as any visitor to The Robin Hood, Docksider, Flanagan’s Outback, Astwood Arms, Bulldog’s Sports Bar, either of the two Swizzle Inns – or any number of other sports bars and pubs that screen football matches — can attest. Seats can be hard to come by during the quadrennial World Cup, annual mid-week Champions League matches or English Premiership matches.

“Football brings a significant amount of business to many of Bermuda’s pubs,” says Jay Correia, owner of the Swizzle Inns. “While the NFL, MLB, NHL and rugby have their supporters nothing equals the attraction of ‘footy’.

“In recent years, pubs have taken to becoming the home of certain teams like Chelsea at Swizzle Inn and Liverpool at Docksider. While many games can be watched at home the atmosphere of a pub crowd cheering their favourite team wins out for many people.”

Even Bermuda’s outgoing Chief Justice, Ian Kawaley, said his farewells at a special sitting of the Supreme Court in July of this year with a not-so-subtle mention of the side he supports, Manchester United, by saying that he “hopes the Bermuda Bar will in future be…United!”.

So, whether it’s on the field, in the classroom, in the bar – or in front of the Bar – it’s undeniable that Bermudians view football as an essential part of their lives.

Duncan Hall also finds football indispensable. He has attended four World Cups, two Euro tournaments, two Champions League finals, and once joined a group led by legendary Bermudian footballer Clyde Best that travelled to Buenos Aires to watch Argentina play Brazil.

The post Football: A game for forward movement appeared first on RG Magazines.

The sun shone beautifully through my moms’ living room window as I eagerly set up the radio to get full commentary of the game. The whole week was nothing but talk about it — who will Kenny Dalglish pick for his Liverpool team? I was thinking this  as I perused the  newspapers that week.

My adrenaline  was always high in the lead up to games but this was special. Liverpool have the opportunity to clinch an FA cup final place if they can beat Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest and go on to clinch a league and cup double in May.

The three o’clock kick off had finally arrived as Liverpool had there first chance to score. Suddenly a Liverpool supporter ran onto the pitch and then another. What was happening ?  Was there crowd trouble ?

The section behind Bruce Grobellar (Liverpool goal keeper) had become over crowded to the point where supporters were starting to get crushed.

Bruce asked the police officer next to the pen, to “get the gate open” and  was ignored until the officer was told by him in no uncertain terms to open it. By then it was too late as casualties began to mount up and advertising boards were used as stretchers until the paramedics arrived.

As the chaos mounted, both sets of players were ordered to leave the field until order was established. People that had come watch a football game were now perishing before the eyes of the nation. Those who survived the crush were embraced shocked and dazed by the events.

By 3.15 that afternoon 60 people had perished in the crush at the leppings lane end of the ground. No longer was I interested in football as numbness over took me. I just couldn’t speak that evening as I sat with my mother unable to comprehend the events of the afternoon.

Losing my father to a cardiac arrest when I was six was my first taste of bereavement. The shock and numbness was there that day in 1976 as well. Now as an 18 year old going on 19 it was there again only on a far far bigger scale.

The final death toll was 96. Bill Shankly former Liverpool manager once said “football’s a matter of life and death.” No it’s not. Human life is far more important and is a gift that needs to be protected and cherished always.

Losing my mother to cancer in 1994 only brings this message home further  that life can never be taken for granted. For the 96 that perished may you all rest in peace and that none of you will ever walk alone.

The post A 29 year remembrance of the Hillsborough disaster appeared first on RG Magazines.

Led by a referee and his assistants, two teams of players march out on to a pristine pitch as Handel’s Zadok the Priestis played over loud speakers and a crowd of thousands waits in anticipation of the game to come. It is a familiar sight to anyone who has watched the Uefa Champions League over the past several years, and now it is happening, minus the crowds, on the North Field, at the National Sports Centre, in Bermuda.

The brainchild of Kenny Thompson and Andrew Bascome, the Youth Football Super League Bermuda is the latest attempt to provide ‘serious’ football competition for local players with aspirations of being the next Lionel Messi, Christian Ronaldo, or Nahki Wells. A league aimed at players from the under-9 to under-15 age groups means for many involved that dream is still very much alive.

On Monday evenings the island’s young footballers play in their own champions league under lights in an atmosphere that while not quite electric, has the feel of a competition that carries as much weight for the players here as it does elsewhere. It is a place where, for a while at least, those taking part can believe anything is possible.

“It is normal for players of that age to have ambitions to be professionals – the reality is that very few will get there, but I am a firm believer in ‘why not’,” said Thompson. “Why not go for it, who am I to say that only a few can make it, so don’t even try. It is our responsibility to give them the best chance to succeed.”

It is not a chance that the island’s best young players have always been given. There is a valid argument to be made that the likes of Shaun Goater, Kyle Lightbourne, Reggie Lambe, Nahki Wells and others succeeded despite the system they were developed in, rather than because of it. The gap in youth development has long been recognised as being an issue in Bermuda; it is a gap that Thompson, Bascome, and the Bermuda Football Association, who support the initiative, are hoping to close.

“We do very basic football activities very well, for children that want to play football the opportunity is there,” Thompson said. “Then there is part of the football population, they are very serious [about the game], and they have serious ambitions, and they have to be catered to as well. I think overall, in Bermuda, we have tended to leave out [the needs] of that serious population.”

Thompson knows what it feels like to be let down when, as a young player in Bermuda, your expectations aren’t met. He and Bascome were what he terms ‘serious players’, ones whose approach even in the week preceding a pre-season friendly was dominated by training, eating, and sleeping right. He quickly learnt that not everyone felt the same way.

“I would take it very seriously, and then arriving for the match that all falls out of the window because I’m taking it seriously, but there are no goals, the field is not marked, there is no official referee, no uniforms,” he said.

“There is a level of disappointment there, and that was a recurring situation, and that’s pre-season. The league matches weren’t that bad, but still there was a feeling that we weren’t serious. In many ways it didn’t live up to our expectations.

“I think today we’re getting that [same sentiment] from young people, taking into consideration that back in our day we didn’t have all the information at our fingertips that these children have today. We didn’t know what top football looked like on a regular basis, you fast forward to this generation and they’re watching the Champions League, and the Premier League, and La Liga, and Bundesliga, and this is every day. They see it on the internet, they see it on their phones; they are just in touch with the reality of what top football looks like.”

With knowledge comes a realisation from young players that in many ways they were being short changed by the system that Bermuda had in place for developing the skills of the next generation. “These serious players, we give them what amounts to be nothing more than just a kick-about – an open space with a football, two teams playing, that’s about it,” Thompson said. “And that has its place, definitely has its place, because everybody should have the opportunity to play football. But, for those serious guys, their expectations are much higher than any other generation before.

“They can pinpoint what they have, in comparison to what they see. At seven, or eight, nine, 10 years old, they are flying with ambition and we keep disappointing them, and at maybe 12 the interest starts to wear off, and by 15 or 16 they’re not playing at all. And we see, progressively, that as the players get older the number of players is dropping off.”

Player development is not something new to Thompson or Bascome, both have tried their best to improve football on the island at a variety of levels. The new competition was the result of a realisation of their own, that something serious had to be done to serve the ambitions and abilities of the island’s talented young players.

“We felt that this was the time to do something very, very serious for youth football; something that spoke to meeting the expectations of young players,” Thompson said.

Serious meant competition, a pathway for players to improve, coaches who understood that making mistakes is as important in player development as winning, and that building character, moulding a professional mindset was all part of what was missing.

“ Even on an island of 60,000 people, why shouldn’t these young people dream, and the fact of the matter is that the next Lionel Messi could come from anywhere in the world,” Thompson said. “We won’t know, and we won’t provide that individual with the best chance unless we provide these sorts of things, and in this case, this competition.”

Thompson knows that the percentage of players who actually make it as the top level is impossibly small when compared with those that dream of making it. But, he also knows that being exposed to a serious environment early can lead to an ability to have a career off the field as well.

“It’s the same whether their ambition is to be a professional footballer, or the ambition is to get a college scholarship, the demands are the same,” he said. “It’s going to take sacrifice, it’s going to take perseverance, it’s going to take really hard work. You have to better than the next person, it’s all the same.

“With this competition we are building that mentality to give the next Nahki Wells a really good chance to succeed. I’m so proud of Nahki, and Reggie (Lambe) and others, and the thing is they’ve done, they’re doing it, but they’re doing it despite [coming from Bermuda] not as a result of some system that we had in place.

“So, imagine what they could have done with a much better structure in place.”

The post Kenny Thompson: Chasing the dream appeared first on RG Magazines.