Eastern Champs launched amid venue setback

André Lowe, Senior Staff Reporter

Jamaica National Building Society yesterday announced their 25th year of sponsorship of the Eastern Secondary Schools' Sports Association (ESSSA) Track and Field Championships; 'Eastern Champs', during a media briefing at the Altamont Court Hotel in New Kingston yesterday morning.

March 7 and 8 are the dates and the University of the West Indies' Mona Bowl is the venue for this year's staging of the meet, which features schools from the parishes of St Thomas, Portland, St Mary and parts of St Andrew.

Of note, this year will see the participation of all 22 ESSSA member schools, an occurrence that has not happened since the 2006 staging of the championships.

In previous years, the National Stadium would host the final day of competition, but that seems unlikely this year, even though the work on the new athletics track which was recently laid at the facility is already competition ready.

At yesterday's launch, the Stadium East was announced as the venue for this year's staging, but a late switch was forced after organisers took a look at the track there and were left unimpressed during a site visit yesterday afternoon.

Not ideal

ESSSA president, Colonel Errol Johnson, admitted that not having access to the National Stadium is not ideal and may pose some challenges to the organisers. He pointed out that meet director Garth Gayle has been in dialogue with Independence Park Limited, the managers of the facilities, to explore the possibility of the National Stadium track becoming available. However, no updates on the matter were available.

Johnson was, however, confident that this would not have a direct impact on the organisation of the meet itself.

"It (not having access to the National Stadium) has a big impact because we know that it's difficult to have spectators at Stadium East for an entire day because it has no covering. So that would be an impact because I don't think many schools will be sending in their spectators and not many students would want to come in to spend the entire day in the sun anyway," said Johnson. "I'm also not sure about the surface at the track at Stadium East so, yes, we do have some concerns."

"I don't think it will detract too much from the organisation of the meet so we are well prepared and everything is in place," Johnson added.

Some 1,040 athletes are expected to participate at the meet and Wesley Scott, customer service and mortgage development adviser at Jamaica National, expressed pride of his company's involvement with the meet.

Proud sponsor

"As the main sponsors of this 2011 ESSSA meet, Jamaica National Building Society is proud to be associated with this event, which each year showcases some of the rising track and field stars from high schools in eastern Jamaica, who eventually emerge to represent our country admirably at all levels," said Scott.

Defending champions Buff Bay, the first Portland-based school to win the championships, will be hard-pressed to repeat their surprise triumph over the more fancied Oberlin powerhouse, but head coach Kevin Brown is confident that his team is well equipped to retain its title despite some setbacks to their preparation.

Buff Bay finished fourth in 2009, fifth in 2008 and seventh position in 2007, but managed to turn around their fortunes last year with one of the biggest surprises in the history of the meet.

"We have been working hard, we have had some setback with the rain in Portland but we have been working hard enough and I'm sure we can defend our title," said Brown. "I am confident that we will take it home this year again. I know it's going to be tough because I am expecting them to come all out for this one."