AS I watched an enthralling cricket match between CASE and The Mico University College last week, the question that incessantly bothered my mind was, why hasn’t inter-collegiate sport taken off in the mould of its high school counterpart here in Jamaica?

For, while a growing number of books are replete with the heroics of Jamaican high school legends ranging from Norman Manley and Herb McKenley to Veronica Campbell Brown and Usain Bolt, mention of the college exploits of the majority of our sports stars has perennially been confined to the ambits of the NCAA and other such sporting organisations firmly rooted in the United States.

In fact, whereas universities and colleges in the US benefit immensely from bumper stickers and a slew of other public relations paraphernalia lauding the sporting achievements of their institutions not to mention heated debates on and off the airwaves — that seems to be the hallowed and exclusive domain of Jamaica’s traditional high schools.

As a testimony to this, ties of various colours are on proud display inside motor vehicles, notwithstanding the fact that many a diehard alumni would have said goodbye to their beloved schools decades earlier.

For whatever reasons, however, frenetic sporting sentiments have never been transferred to our tertiary institutions, which ironically churn out graduates of the highest calibre who admirably match-up in the global marketplace.

The fact is that the arbitrary individual in Jamaica does not know the colours, let alone the school motto, of our most eminent tertiary institutions, as opposed to all 200-odd teams that compete at Boys and Girls Champs.

This scenario, though disappointing, should not be surprising since Jamaicans have a penchant for doing things in reverse order — as obtained when, without even a flicker of a professional football league, the Reggae Boyz qualified for the FIFA World Cup Finals back in 1998.

For, notwithstanding the importance of emphasising the requisite skills and habits at a tender age, a logical progression for sports-oriented countries is to treat college competition as the crucial final step ahead of entry into the professional arena.

In contrast, college sports in this country is often treated as an unnecessary, and even bothersome, step in the developmental process, with most local sporting bodies leapfrogging this step and instead, moving from the high school to the professional level.

A consequence of this anomaly is that special talents like Walter Boyd and Onandi Lowe are never properly harnessed, yet we wonder why these individuals are always at odds with authority, are woefully bereft of the requisite social skills like dealing with the media, and spur such aggressive and even hateful debates among members of the public.

An embarrassing reality regarding local intercollegiate sports is that it lags behind even its prep school counterpart in popularity and interest and sadly, perpetually struggles to attract sponsors and fans to its mainly low-keyed events.

A fundamental reason for this evident privileging of high school over inter-collegiate sport is that the former is steeped in over a century of rich tradition, while the latter is a comparative fledgling in a society in which the very concept of higher level education is still a novelty.

At this juncture, one should remember that until a number of tertiary institutions came into existence in the 1980s — like GC Foster and the community colleges — there would have only been UWI, UTech (formerly CAST), the defunct Jamaica School of Agriculture (JSA) and a handful of teachers colleges competing in intercollegiate competitions.

And yet, we have seen some progress from the dark days when the concept of tertiary education was not only unheard of, but was a drastic shift from the undesirable position where attending a high school was not only a great privilege, but the ultimate for the vast majority of Jamaicans as well.

This is underscored by the fact that many secondary institutions were, and still are, called colleges — Munro, St George’s, JC and Cornwall are cases in point.

Despite the unfavourable situation in local intercollegiate sports, it is to noted that UTech Ja is moving to spur a change in outlook and in this regard, have launched their Classic series which to date includes a Twenty/20 cricket festival and the spiralling UTech Track and Field Classic which was staged at the National Stadium yesterday.

Further, the UWI has come on board with an athletic meet of its own called the UWI Invitational, while GC Foster has likwise chipped in with a Classic meet as well.

It is a fervent wish that these innovations will trigger an epidemic among local intercollegiate sports and that in time to come, the visibility and corporate support that is accorded high school sports will also decorate the landscape of intercollegiate sports.