Jonielle Smith’s injury headache for World Junior coaches
A hamstring injury to top female sprinter Jonielle Smith was the main concern for the coaching staff coming out of a five-day pre-World Junior Championships camp held by the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association (JAAA) which ended Monday.
Michael Carr, head coach of the 42-member team that will represent Jamaica at next week’s IAAF Wold Junior Championships in Eugene, Oregon, in the United States told the Jamaica Observer they were happy for the camp, the first for juniors in many years.
Also of some concern was the no-show of two athletes, sprint hurdler Tyler Mason and sprinter Kedisha Dallas, but said he understood the absence of the latter.
The team members will start leaving the island today when two groups will depart for Eugene, while a third group will leave on Sunday for the six-day championship that starts
on Tuesday.
The camp which started last week Thursday saw the athletes being hosted at The Mico University College with twice-a-day training at the National Stadium and GC Foster Sports College in Angels, St Catherine.
“The camp was great,” Carr said. “We achieved most of what we set out to do and most objectives were met.”
The objectives, he said, were to give the coaching staff an idea of the fitness and health of the athletes, getting to know the athletes and also for them to get familiar with each other, and all of these were achieved.
Carr said, while there were “a few niggling injuries” to some of the athletes, Smith’s was the most serious one, as “she did not train as well as she should during the camp”.
According to him, she should be ready to compete come next week.
In the event that Smith can’t compete, Carr said there were options, especially for the relays.
He was unable to say why Mason had not showed up for the camp and noted that, while Dallas was not able to make it, the staff had been given an explanation which they accepted.
Overall, he said, they were optimistic going into the event and said most of the athletes were where they were expected to be.
He singled out 800m runner Kevon Robinson who he described as “looking really good”.
