EDITORIAL - Greater value in Champs

As a spectacle and showcase of talent, there can be few high-school events anywhere in the world to equal or surpass Jamaica's annual Boys and Girls' Championships. Certainly, not in athletics.

Indeed, the emotion generated by Champs, including how it flutters the old school tie, was in evidence among the thousands who packed the National Stadium in Kingston for last Saturday's climax of the five-day games, and at Calabar High School in the capital, and at Edwin Allen in Frankfield, Clarendon, both on Monday, for the celebration of their victories, respectively, in the boys' and girls' segments of Champs. At both schools, teachers, students, parents and others wept.

If nothing else, Champs underlines the fact that Jamaica's prowess in global athletics is no fluke, or that, as some would wish to convince the world, the result of officially blessed and systematic cheating by this country's world-class athletes. That dominance rests on natural talent, a tradition of excellence that has its roots in more than a century of tradition of Champs and the return on the investment more than three decades ago in establishing G.C. Foster College for Physical Education and Sports.

But Champs offers Jamaica something beyond the immediate gratification of high-quality athletics competition, and, perhaps, tells us something profound about ourselves.

The first point is about economically leveraging a cool global brand attached to a high-quality event. There is little doubt that Jamaica is a cool brand, especially when associated with sports and entertainment. Given the atmosphere at Champs and the performances of the student athletes - their running times in the sprints as good as most, and better than many Olympic participants from other countries - we believe that, properly packaged, there is a global television audience for the games.

We sense an increasing effort by the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) - the organisers of Champs - to unlock value in the domestic and foreign markets, but it is obvious that more can, and ought to be, done. For having a packed stadium for the games, we feel, is possible on more than the final day. So, too, should television audiences be beyond Jamaica and the Caribbean. And Internet streaming should be monetised domestically and internationally.

Professional marketers

But ensuring that Champs' economics delivers near its full potential may require ISSA engaging professional marketers to manage that side of the business. It is an idea that we believe the association has contemplated, but which it should now put into action.

The other matter to which we draw attention is the organisation of Champs. It is, to say the least, world-class. These are games involving scores of schools and hundreds of athletes competing in many disciplines, involving heats, semi-finals and finals. That could be a logistical nightmare.

Largely, these events go off on time, with only minor glitches. This is achieved with mostly volunteer staff. And it happens in a country notorious, especially at the governmental level, for operational inefficiency. Yet it is noticeable that it is not only at Champs, but at most athletic meets, that there is this efficiency.

Part of the reason may be that Jamaicans bring a passion to track and field. But the deeper explanation is the tradition of professionalism that exists in the sport. What happens at meets is the end product of preparation and planning, from which the rest of us should learn.

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