Keisha Hill, Staff Reporter

Paul Banta at a recent training session at Priory. - Junior Dowie/Staff Photographer

ON OUR journey through life we never know where the road will take us.Paul Banta, 64-year-old international coaching educator and the executive director and founder of Global Soccer Ministries (GSM), never anticipated that after 30 years of successful coaching at many levels in the United States and overseas, his faith would have led him into the soccer ministry.

Banta is on a mission in 'coaching education' and works with youths and adults at international ministry sites in Eastern Europe, Central America and the Caribbean.

Born in New York to an American father and an Irish mother, Banta describes his younger days as active and that he could have been best described as a 'rebel'.

"I had an Irish thing in me. I was always getting into trouble," Banta said. "But there was something that always drove me. God has a plan for us and he had a plan for me since the start," he said.

wasn't interested in Christianity.

"I was a rebellious person. Not that I did much wrong, but I wasn't interested in Christianity. I was interested in action and I lived that way for the first part of my life."

While a young boy, his family moved from New York City to rural upstate New York and that was where he was introduced to football.

He recalls that an Irish relative visiting his home had brought a football with him. As he watched his relative play, he realised it was something he could grow to like.

"From when I was 11, I loved the game. I played at the schoolboy level, at university, in semi-professional leagues and then I started coaching clubs," he said.

Banta spent his youth learning all he could about the game. He attended Kings College and earned a Bachelor's degree in physical education and later attended Western Connecticut State where he received his Master's degree also in physical education.

"There was no emphasis on football, because I wanted to understand sports psychology and physiology which would fit into how I wanted to get the players to perform better," he said.

At 25, Banta was the youngest coach in the United States to earn a coaching licence.

"I was on the road to football mania. I loved it, I studied it, read all the books and creatively tried to figure out the best way to coach. And, for some strange reason, I did it," he said.

teething pains

Banta's journey was not without its teething pains. The man who has coached youth, college and semi-pro teams at the national and international levels, winning more than 600 matches since 1968, said he was a "tenacious and arrogant man".

"I did not want to lose a game and I thought the only way forward was to fight forward and never give up. It wasn't until I had an experience in my life where I lost my job because of my arrogance and forcefulness that I was forced to change," he said.

Banta, who got married at 21 to a Jamaican who was a Christian, felt that because of their relationship he was also a Chris-tian. But, after losing his job, he realised he was farther away from the truth than he had thought.

"That night, after losing my job, I told my wife I had failed as a man and as a husband and I wanted to accept Jesus as my personal saviour. I was 38," he said.

The former NCAA Division One football coach changed his ways but after a while he drifted back to some of his old ways.

"It was not so much about me but about the game and the players. They knew I was a Christian, but I was not the type of Christian that was honouring God," he said. "I still got angry. On the back training fields some of the words were not too good. I was not representing the man God really wanted me to be," he said.

As fate would have it, because of Banta's 'forcefulness', he lost another coaching job in 1997.

"There were some circumstances and I got angry again. But because I knew that in failure I had to go forward, I spent three months in Bible study and prayer," he said.

Global Soccer Ministries International (GSMI) was founded in 2001 after Banta realised he could help to educate coaches who could either continue higher education in their own countries, receive a soccer or academic scholarship at an American University, play for their national team or obtain a professional contract.

non-profit organisation

"GSM is a non-profit organisation with ministries in Guatemala, Jamaica, Romania and, hopefully, Haiti. It is operated by a Christian board of directors with local boards in each country of operation and is funded through partnerships with many individual such as Christian organisations, churches, foundations and businesses both from within the US and from other partnering countries," Banta said.

GSM's vision is to teach football education and biblical principles and to develop coaching education, he stated.

"I write football curriculum for seminars and schools. Hopefully, we can help the countries we are currently located in to improve the level of coaching, so that the players can improve and the level of football can be improved," Banta said.