UTech's sport to have its '60 Minutes' on CBS

BY DANIA BOGLE Observer staff reporter

Monday, August 23, 2010

US-BASED television network CBS Broadcasting Inc will be in Jamaica to produce a segment on the sporting programme at the University of Technology (UTech) for its hour-long current affairs programme 60 Minutes, president Professor Errol Morrison told the Observer.

"They're coming to look at the new faculty, the facilities," Morrison explained during a recent interview.

The polytechnic university, which has long been known as the home training ground of the MVP Track and Field Club, is responsible for the preparation of nine World and Olympic Games medallists including Brigitte Foster-Hylton, Asafa Powell, Shelly-Ann Fraser, Melaine Walker, Sherone Simpson, Germaine Mason, and Shericka Williams.

The athetes all come under the tutelage of head coach Stephen Francis and his brother Paul.

UTech has recently expanded its teaching programme to include a Bachelor of Sports Science degree with specialisations in Athletic Training, Sports Management, and the Art and Science of Coaching.

The Faculty of Science and Sport was launched earlier this summer and it was during this launch that the work being done by the university drew the attention of a 60 Minutes producer.

UTech last week also signed two Memoranda of Understanding with the Heart Institute of the Caribbean and the Winchester Surgery and Medical Institute for the shared information on research programmes in various areas of medicine and sport.

The agreements will see the three facilities sharing joint information on cardiovascular medicine, sports physiology, sports science, instructional delivery, surgical and medical management.

In anticipation of the visit by CBS, UTech went on a recent refurbishing campaign which included a paint job of the main buildings at its Papine-based campus.

"That's one of the things that pushed us to get this ready because the Heart Institute has some of the state-of-the-art equipment and this will be seen as part of the UTech total offering so all this will be seen by the 60 Minutes' many viewers as UTech embracing the total approach to the development of sports," Morrison said.

"We are focusing not only on producing the athletes out there but the total study and this is what is making us unique as a university out there," he added.

From a global standpoint, the training facilities used by most athletes who train locally are relatively archaic and Morrison alluded to this as being part of the attraction of producing such a segment by the foreign media.

"I guess they just want to look at the thing in total and at the same time contrast our performance with the poor infrastructure that we have," Morrison said.

"The grass field they can't believe so I think that's what they want to show what is happening in our relatively underdeveloped country, world-level performance with so poor infrastructure development," he concluded.

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UTech's sport to have its '60 Minutes' on CBS