A «Keating Moment»
By Frank Benjamin Horn Hartvedt
Before I founded IFS, I was a football coach for a year for some talented 14-year-olds in Åsane IL in Bergen. It truly was a lovely year. People who have worked with young, gifted boys who intensely dream of becoming professionals might know what I’m talking about. I don’t think you’ll find many people who are more inspired than young foals like that. A strong bond was formed with those boys. And so, it was sad to have to leave them after just one season. The club wanted to hire an NFF-certified coach in my place. My players protested and started a petition. It was a «Keating moment,» and it touched me. I thanked them for it, but I knew that it would end with that one beautiful year.
A while ago, I asked one of my best players from that time, West Norway player Remi M., to write a short text about his experience of that year. It was Remi who took the initiative for the petition.
«I remember meeting Frank and Hans for the first time late one autumn evening at Rollandsbanen in Åsane in 1997 after I had played a match with the ’82 team that I belonged to then. The two were going to be in charge of a separate team made up of the best players from the ’83 cohort in Åsane IL. The team was going to participate in the Norwegian championships. I remember being disappointed with my own effort in the match with the ’82 team, but I quickly recovered after a 10-minute talk with Franky. I was furious about not having scored, but Frank was more concerned with the silky-smooth control I had and the burst of speed he hadn’t seen before. This conversation became the start of a year of absolute confidence-building, a la Frank. For years, I had been told what I needed to improve, that I shouldn’t make this or that choice and shouldn’t do this or that, but rather so-and-so. Frank never mentioned anything negative. Instead of nitpicking things we needed to get better at, he focused on and refined the skills we were already good at. There were 22 of us running around for a whole year with enormous belief in what we were doing because of Frank, who constantly gave us reasons to believe in ourselves. Completely average footballers believed they were among the city’s best because they had been boosted with confidence after an enormous turn they had executed at the last training session, or a touch that was stuck to their Copa Mundial boots.
Frank also taught us to not care what other people thought of us regarding what we did in life or how we dressed. He unequivocally stood out as a good role model in that regard when he showed up at Norway Cup in Oslo and walked in front of the boys wearing a t-shirt and boxer shorts because he thought those boxers were too cool to be hidden under shorts or trousers. Class. I have probably personally never been better on the field, neither mentally nor physically, than when I had Frank as a coach, and I will never forget it. We simply felt invincible with him – and Hans, who was a perfect sidekick to Frank; one who balanced him and made him better.
Frank had god-like status among us boys. There are so many talents I see in SK Brann (in Bergen) and elsewhere who I think would have blossomed if they had been given a few months with Frank, because you see them tense up and are afraid of making mistakes. I was never afraid of making mistakes under Frank’s wings because it was perfectly okay to fail again and again as long as you dared to try. If you dribbled past two boys and missed the shot, he praised the action that came before and didn’t focus on the fact that you missed. It’s a shame that Frank didn’t continue as a coach after the year with us when he himself saw what a big difference he made to people. I believe to this day that he could have become one of the foremost in that field.»
(This article was published on frankbenjaminhartvedt.no in 2024)