A number of top high school coaches are asking for a late change to the schedule of the ISSA/GraceKennedy National High School Athletics Championships (Champs) to avoid what they say is a needless clash of events.

Less than two weeks until the start of the March 12-16 extravaganza, the coaches said the scheduling of the Class Two girls’ long jump and the triple jump Open two hours apart makes no logical sense.

Presently, the schedule shows the Class Two girls taking part in the preliminaries of the long jump at 8:30 am on Thursday’s third day of the five-day meet and the finals later at 5:50 pm.

The triple jump Open will then start at 7:50 pm, but according to Michael Dyke of reigning girls’ champions Edwin Allen High, “it is possible that the long jump might not even be completed in time for the start of the triple jump.”

When contacted yesterday, chairman of the ISSA Champs Committee Colleen Montague was not aware of the issue.

George Forbes, competitions secretary of ISSA, questioned the timing of the airing of the concern, saying that a preliminary schedule had been circulated in January and several changes had been made at the recommendation of other coaches.

“We sent out a preliminary schedule given that we were going to have an almost full day on Tuesday and several coaches made recommendations and we accepted them on merit,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

A number of the coaches who spoke to the Observer Thursday admitted they had not noticed the closeness of the two events until they were finalising their entry forms and realised what was going on and the difficulties it would present for the young ladies.

Corey Bennett, head coach of Hydel High, agreed with Dyke that one of the jumps could be switched from Thursday to Tuesday where two other jumping events will be held, the preliminaries of the boys’ Classes One and Two.

The preliminaries of the boys Class One is scheduled to start at 2:35 pm and the Class Two two hours later.