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Well done, Calabar, Holmwood
published: Wednesday | March 19, 2008
THE GRACEKENNEDY Boys and Girls Athletics Championships, arguably the premier sporting event in this country, ended at the National Stadium on Saturday after four days of action that gripped the nation.
Defending champions and favourites Calabar High, in the boys' category, and Holmwood Technical's girls, retained their respective titles by fairly comfortable margins.
Congratulations!
The green-and-black standard bearers from Red Hills Road, with 277.50 points, ended with a substantial 44.50 gap ahead of closest and arch-rivals, Kingston College, who tallied 233.
Almost fully clad in maroon, the girls from Christiana in Manchester, who accumulated a whopping 352 points, distanced themselves far more significantly with a 141.50 margin over the second-places finisher, Vere Technical, who garnered 210 points.
There were some outstanding performances throughout the meet, topped by the meet's female champion athlete, Holmwood Technical's Salcia Slack, who was exceptional in the heptathlon where she quietly established a national junior record of 5,411 points. The previous highest tabulation in the seven-discipline event was 5,290, set way back in 1993 by former Vere Technical athlete Icolyn Kelly, while representing Barton County College at a junior college meet in Texas, United States.
Triple jump open
Slack also won the triple jump Open and Class One discus and placed second in the long jump for a remarkable 37 points. No easy feat, my friend.
Calabar's Class one athlete, Andrew Riley, picked up 10 points less as he won the heptathlon, Class One high jump and took second in the 110 metres hurdles. He also ran a blistering lead-off leg on the winning Class One sprint relay team.
Then there were the Performances of the Meet. Officially, Vere's Jura Levy and Adam Cummings won those awards in their respective categories. The 14-year-old Munrovian Cummings, my goodly friend Bryan's son, obliterated Winston Barnes' 2003 Class Three 100 metres record from 10.99 to 10.91 seconds.
The stocky Levy erased Nadine Palmer of Holmwood's 2000 Class Two girls' record of 11.50 seconds for the shortest sprint, making 11.46 the new standard.
Levy went on the wrap up the sprint double as she took the 200m in 24.48 seconds.
There were two other double sprint champions, Edwin Allen's Shawna Anderson who took the Class One 100m in 11.58 and 200m in 24.61, and Holmwood's Class Four girl Chris-Ann Gordon, who won the 100m in 12.08 and 200m in 25.32.
The boys' sprint categories had a great deal of quality and were far more competitive and this manifested itself in the fact that nobody scored a sprint double, though there were a series of exciting showdowns.
As expected, Yohan Blake took the Class One 100m, in 10.27 seconds, ahead of teammate Nickel Ashmeade (10.34). There were expectations though, that Blake's time would have been sub-10.
Ashmeade won the 200m in 21.04, upstaging Calabar's Ramone McKenzie (21.05), who was expected to battle out the finish with Blake, who faded into third in 21.31. This was one of the meet's truly big races.
McKenzie, in one of the big performances, too, paced himself well from the dreaded lane eight to score a comfortable win in the 400m in 46.62, some distance from St Jago's Riker Hylton (47.33) and Manning's' Darrion Bent (47.52).
Irrespective of the other athletes running anchor, the performance of the meet, as far as I'm concerned, came in the penultimate event - the girls 4x400 metres relay - by Holmwood's 400m and 800m champion, Bobby-Gaye Wilkins.
With the leader already more than 20 metres away on the decisive leg, Wilkins, who got the baton fourth, produced a scintillating run and reacted courageously when those on the lead dug for extra, to execute a remarkable victory going away.
This is the stuff champs are made of. Yet, spare a thought for those who took the fall from grace, particularly the sprint relay anchor runners from Manchester's 4x100m Class Three team, Orinthia Bennett, and Calabar's 4x100m Class Three, Tevin Taylor.
Third leg
I was particularly disturbed by what I saw, more so the reaction coming from the athletes' teammates who had run the third leg and handed them the baton.
In both instances, these team members who had just handed over the baton, who were the closest ones to their team member who just had an awful fall on the track; people who they would have been practising with day in, day out for some time, who were like their brothers and sisters, basically just flashed off their fallen teammate and walked off the track. None made an effort to sprint down the track and check if their teammate was OK.
It's natural to feel disappointed in such moments, especially when they are so young.
I am urging the coaches to encourage their athletes to maintain that brotherly and sisterly vibe to care for each other. If they don't, nobody else will.
audley.boyd@gleanerjm.com
published: Wednesday | March 19, 2008
THE GRACEKENNEDY Boys and Girls Athletics Championships, arguably the premier sporting event in this country, ended at the National Stadium on Saturday after four days of action that gripped the nation.
Defending champions and favourites Calabar High, in the boys' category, and Holmwood Technical's girls, retained their respective titles by fairly comfortable margins.
Congratulations!
The green-and-black standard bearers from Red Hills Road, with 277.50 points, ended with a substantial 44.50 gap ahead of closest and arch-rivals, Kingston College, who tallied 233.
Almost fully clad in maroon, the girls from Christiana in Manchester, who accumulated a whopping 352 points, distanced themselves far more significantly with a 141.50 margin over the second-places finisher, Vere Technical, who garnered 210 points.
There were some outstanding performances throughout the meet, topped by the meet's female champion athlete, Holmwood Technical's Salcia Slack, who was exceptional in the heptathlon where she quietly established a national junior record of 5,411 points. The previous highest tabulation in the seven-discipline event was 5,290, set way back in 1993 by former Vere Technical athlete Icolyn Kelly, while representing Barton County College at a junior college meet in Texas, United States.
Triple jump open
Slack also won the triple jump Open and Class One discus and placed second in the long jump for a remarkable 37 points. No easy feat, my friend.
Calabar's Class one athlete, Andrew Riley, picked up 10 points less as he won the heptathlon, Class One high jump and took second in the 110 metres hurdles. He also ran a blistering lead-off leg on the winning Class One sprint relay team.
Then there were the Performances of the Meet. Officially, Vere's Jura Levy and Adam Cummings won those awards in their respective categories. The 14-year-old Munrovian Cummings, my goodly friend Bryan's son, obliterated Winston Barnes' 2003 Class Three 100 metres record from 10.99 to 10.91 seconds.
The stocky Levy erased Nadine Palmer of Holmwood's 2000 Class Two girls' record of 11.50 seconds for the shortest sprint, making 11.46 the new standard.
Levy went on the wrap up the sprint double as she took the 200m in 24.48 seconds.
There were two other double sprint champions, Edwin Allen's Shawna Anderson who took the Class One 100m in 11.58 and 200m in 24.61, and Holmwood's Class Four girl Chris-Ann Gordon, who won the 100m in 12.08 and 200m in 25.32.
The boys' sprint categories had a great deal of quality and were far more competitive and this manifested itself in the fact that nobody scored a sprint double, though there were a series of exciting showdowns.
As expected, Yohan Blake took the Class One 100m, in 10.27 seconds, ahead of teammate Nickel Ashmeade (10.34). There were expectations though, that Blake's time would have been sub-10.
Ashmeade won the 200m in 21.04, upstaging Calabar's Ramone McKenzie (21.05), who was expected to battle out the finish with Blake, who faded into third in 21.31. This was one of the meet's truly big races.
McKenzie, in one of the big performances, too, paced himself well from the dreaded lane eight to score a comfortable win in the 400m in 46.62, some distance from St Jago's Riker Hylton (47.33) and Manning's' Darrion Bent (47.52).
Irrespective of the other athletes running anchor, the performance of the meet, as far as I'm concerned, came in the penultimate event - the girls 4x400 metres relay - by Holmwood's 400m and 800m champion, Bobby-Gaye Wilkins.
With the leader already more than 20 metres away on the decisive leg, Wilkins, who got the baton fourth, produced a scintillating run and reacted courageously when those on the lead dug for extra, to execute a remarkable victory going away.
This is the stuff champs are made of. Yet, spare a thought for those who took the fall from grace, particularly the sprint relay anchor runners from Manchester's 4x100m Class Three team, Orinthia Bennett, and Calabar's 4x100m Class Three, Tevin Taylor.
Third leg
I was particularly disturbed by what I saw, more so the reaction coming from the athletes' teammates who had run the third leg and handed them the baton.
In both instances, these team members who had just handed over the baton, who were the closest ones to their team member who just had an awful fall on the track; people who they would have been practising with day in, day out for some time, who were like their brothers and sisters, basically just flashed off their fallen teammate and walked off the track. None made an effort to sprint down the track and check if their teammate was OK.
It's natural to feel disappointed in such moments, especially when they are so young.
I am urging the coaches to encourage their athletes to maintain that brotherly and sisterly vibe to care for each other. If they don't, nobody else will.
audley.boyd@gleanerjm.com
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