Those seeking to emulate excellence in team sport need look no further than the St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) cricket team which has yet again ended the schoolboy season in pole position.

Of course, it’s not just in cricket that the Santa Cruz-based school — now celebrating its 50th anniversary — has enjoyed sporting success.

In football, for example, STETHS has thrice won the daCosta Cup for rural high schools, the rural Ben Francis KO once, and also the all-island Olivier Shield once. It has never had the distinction of claiming the schools’ athletics championship but has contributed significantly to the pool of great Jamaican athletes — among them Mr Winthrop Graham, Ms Sherika Williams and Mrs Brigitte Foster-Hylton.

The school — one of the leading academic institutions in southern and western Jamaica — has also done very well in other sports, including basketball and netball.

But it is cricket more than any other sport that has made the STETHS name a virtual synonym for high achievement.

Wednesday’s victory over Innswood High in the Spalding Cup marked the school’s fifth consecutive year as all-island schoolboy cricket champions. It was their second season as treble champions, having earlier successfully defended the three-year-old Grace-sponsored limited overs’ title and the very prestigious Grace Headley Cup for rural schools.

Last week’s triumph over Tacky High in the Headley Cup was the fifth straight and the 24th going back just over 30 years to the late 1970s.

In the context of modern schoolboy cricket, it’s an extraordinary and matchless record.

It’s all the more admirable, since cricket is notoriously expensive. The cost of cricket gear alone is more than a stretch for most schools, making the development of a proper cricket programme very, very difficult.

To make matters worse, there is no subvention from Government to support competitive sport in schools.

It means that schools such as STETHS must depend on the wider community, including corporate bodies, parents, past students and fund-raising activities to keep their sport programmes going.

Crucially, there has to be leadership. In the case of STETHS, the building of such a strong cricket culture has much to do with the work, decades ago, of the late former principal Mr John Pottinger, who saw great merit in organised sport and cricket in particular.

Credit is due to his successors, including current principal Mr Keith Wellington, for building on the early effort.

Surely, no praise can be too high for the coaches and managers who have devoted themselves to STETHS and its cricket programme over many years. Special mention must be made of Dr Donovan Bennett who has been integrally involved since the 1970s; and to his protégé, former national cricket coach Mr Junior Bennett (no relation), who has supervised the technical aspects of cricket at STETHS for three decades.

In the process, Jamaica and West Indies cricket have not only been well served, but there has been sustenance of the motivation to play the game among children in the school’s traditional feeder communities. Outside of St Elizabeth, these extend to Westmoreland in the west, Manchester in the east and even northwards to southern St James and Trelawny.

Well done, STETHS.