HAYES, Clarendon — Their Premier League team might be wobbling at the moment, but the Sporting Central Academy faithful definitely had a reason to celebrate at the weekend.

The club’s Under-21 outfit crowned their first-round dominance of the Clarendon Captain’s Bakery Major League by lifting the Mid-Season trophy on Saturday evening.

Sporting, who along with Humble Lion are playing as guest teams in the parish league due to the cancellation of the JFF/PLCA U-21 competition, defeated Jamalco 5-3 on penalties in the incentive final at Wembley. The sides hard earlier played to an exciting 1-1 stalemate after full and extra-time.

Sporting currently lead the 12-team league on 29 points, four ahead of second-placed Jamalco. “I’m very proud of the guys,” coach Merron Gordon said in his post-game interview. “They really came out and demonstrated what we have been doing in training.”

While many expected Sporting to dominate the competition, not many expected them to go about it in such a professional manner. They treat each opponent with equal respect, despite the fact that the difference in quality is always evident.

This, in many ways, can be attributed to the long-term vision of the club.

Officially, they are listed as Sporting’s U-21 side in the Major League, but technically, this is their reserve team. The squad is mostly made up of high school players from across the parish — a number of whom have already tasted Premier League action — and it is from this nucleus of youngsters that the club hopes to gradually overhaul the senior team.

“Ninety per cent of them are school boys,” Gordon said, “but the plan is to get as many of them involved in the Premier League by next season”.

Of course, this is not a new philosophy at Sporting. The club was founded on this same principle back in the year 2000 when Brandon Murray and Christopher Dawes were at the helm.

In their very first appearance in the JFF All-Island Knock-out competition, Sporting, while still a Major League team, had the likes of then schoolboys Je-Vaughn Watson, Ricardo Cousins, Sean Givans and Aaron ‘Sir B’ Brown in the team that defeated Arnett Gardens by more than two goals in their first-leg encounter at Brancourt, before having the result overturned in the boardroom.

Overtime, a number of these players moved on to pastures new. But the philosophy of blooding young talent remained with the club through thick and thin.