Champs celebrates 50 years inside ‘Stadium’
THIS year marks 50 years that the annual high school athletics championships is being held inside the National Stadium.
Prior to that, the event, which started out for boys schools only, was staged at Sabina Park on South Camp Road, but after the National Stadium was built for Jamaica’s hosting of the 1962 Central American and Caribbean Games, it moved to its current location.
Track and field statistician Charlie Fuller, a middle-distance runner competing for Kingston College at the time, recalls the first year the event moved when athletes had to run on a turf track.
“It was a track that when it rained, it got muddy and everything flashed up in your face,” Fuller said.
The year, 1963, was also the second of Kingston College’s 14-year victory streak at the Championships.
The North Street-based school was also the first team to score over 100 points in the Boys Championships.
