Last Sunday, there was an article in the sports section of one of our leading newspapers which pointed to youngsters in our high schools being allowed to represent their schools in sports, although they didn’t meet the academic requirements of ISSA for such participation. Earlier in March (14/3/13), in the same newspaper, coaches had complained bitterly about the “endless struggle to keep their programmes afloat, as they stave off rabid recruiters”. One coach lamented, “The athletes that you have, as soon as they reach national prominence, they are hunted and haunted by bigger programmes, so each time you move up, your programme is stifled.” He added, “Recently, we lost four athletes, two of whom were national reps, and all of them were points givers at Champs.” William Knibb High School, which nurtured the world’s fastest sprinter, Usain Bolt, and other top-flight performers, lost 12 athletes to other schools in one season.

The short period of time that the rural football champions, Glenmuir, had between the playing of the DaCosta Cup final and the first leg of the Olivier Shield and the much longer period of rest enjoyed by the Manning Cup champions StGC, was a topic of discussion in schoolboy football circles last season. According to a sports tabloid (12-18/12/12), in commenting on the issue, ISSA’s representative said that a proposal to have the Manning and DaCosta finals played on consecutive days (Friday, Manning Cup and Saturday, DaCosta Cup) could spell trouble for ISSA’s television sponsor. Hence, the implication is that although such a scenario would be in the best interest of our youngsters, it will have to be bypassed to satisfy other interests.

According to the same sports tabloid, “recent actions by the ISSA competitions officer have been seen as putting gate receipts ahead of fair play in administering the island’s high school football competitions”.

Glen Mills, one of our foremost track coaches, was quoted a few months ago in a daily newspaper as saying, “A couple years ago, under sustained pressure from the Sports Medicine Association, ISSA was forced to limit athletes to the number of events they do, because then Class 3 athletes were asked to do up to seven events by their coaches.”

A commission set up to investigate sports at the college level in the USA concluded, among other things, “At the intercollegiate level, television, recruiting, and the competitive value of athletics (ie, the economic pressure to win) form an “iron triangle” that has polluted the educational values of the intercollegiate athletic environment. Is it that the powers that be in high school sports in Jamaica have already been infected by television, recruiting, and the competitive value of athletics, and that these have already formed an “iron triangle” polluting the educational and socialisation values of our interscholastic high school sports environment? Is it too late to take action?

As I read the various responses in the recent article (19/5/13) I was reminded of the sayings, “see no evil, hear no evil” and “see and blind, hear and deaf”, which refer to turning a blind eye to impropriety, and I wondered when we in Jamaica will start calling a spade a spade so that we can better define our problems with a view to quicker and more effective solutions? Why must we make the same mistakes, travel down the same road of scandal and corruption that our much richer neighbour to the north, the USA, has traversed? From all that has been said re the manipulation of marks and other untoward actions by schools, it should be clear to ISSA that no longer can that body sit passively by and wait for persons to bring and drop information in its lap. ISSA needs to be much more active in investigating and ferreting out information and, gathering knowledge, intelligence and the facts relevant to the proper monitoring of the sports activities for which it is responsible. ISSA must put in place the appropriate rules and sanctions for those who break the rules. ISSA must understand that as its competitions (eg Champs, Manning Cup, daCosta Cup etc,) grow in stature (glory, money, etc) so will the pressure, inclination of participants to cheat and corrupt the process. Hence the need for ISSA to be much more alert and vigilant and to put in place the proper management structures which will allow the governing body to be much more in touch with what is happening on the ground during its watch. No longer is it acceptable for ISSA to act as if it is naive and unaware of what is happening around it.

ISSA must ensure that there is a level playing field with respect to its competitions. One of the practices which militates against such a level playing field, and spawns or exacerbates a number of the problems experienced has to do with the business of our high schools recruiting and bringing in youngsters based on their sports ability in an attempt to win at sports. The many ills associated with this activity have been discussed repeatedly and by far outweigh the proclaimed benefits. ISSA needs to remind itself that it is comprised of educators whose primary duty is the education of our children, the moulding of young, impressionable minds into good citizens. It must therefore always act in the best interest of our children and be always aware of the messages (subliminal and otherwise) its actions convey.

With respect to qualification for participation in ISSA-run competitions, we should consider adhering to our declared system of space allocation in high school, which has a competitive basis determined by academic performance and preference, apart from rare, exceptional cases. On this basis, students would choose or be sent to the school at which they are academically able to cope. To represent the school at sports, they would need to maintain the pass mark of that school. This would be required, except for schools at the lowest levels of the academic scale, where students would be allowed to participate once their attendance is good and they can be shown to be making an effort. This would be reasonable, realistic, and pragmatic, demanding of schools at the lower end of the academic ladder that they do the best they can.

This would increase the probability of youngsters being able to cope with doing sports and maintaining a passing grade, since a youngster could in fact participate in interscholastic sports by choosing a school at the academic level with which he/she is compatible. In this national win-win scenario, schools would undoubtedly unearth sports talent, but the development of the full potential of this talent would rest with clubs, sports academies, etc. We would maintain our status as world beaters in sports and, at the same time, there would be no need to manipulate marks and no conflict of interest between education and sports.

Dr Lascelve ‘Muggy’ Graham is a former Jamaican football captain