THERE could be changes to the scheduling at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships to spice up the earlier days of the five-day event.

Title sponsor GraceKennedy and exclusive telecommunications provider Flow revealed that they have had dialogue with the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) to a view to effecting same.

David Reid, GraceKennedy’s business development manager, said their idea is under serious consideration from the organisers.

“It is something that we have been advocating for years as sponsors, because we recognised that we are not maximising the turnout inside of the stadium, especially on the first three days,” said Reid, at the Jamaica Observer’s Monday Exchange.

“So we felt that in order to really get people to come you will have to make adjustments to the schedule to allow the inclusion of certain finals earlier in the course of the event,” he added.

“But we have not been able to finalise that. I think that it is under serious consideration from ISSA, but at the same time ourselves and Flow will continue to lobby for that because we recognised the value in that, because you are able to have 30,000 people in the stadium four days instead of for one or two days,” he continued.

The current schedule of the championship has no final on the opening day Tuesday and none of the main attractions until Friday when the 100m final is contested.

Carlo Redwood, Flow‘s vice-president of marketing and products, said that they, too, have given thought to the idea.

“Everything is a process, and we believe that the first step can be the changes between Saturday and Friday to push more of the bigger finals to Friday and make Friday bigger,” said Redwood, a former student of both Jamaica College and Wolmer’s Boys’ School.

“But we can’t do it all at once because we feel like there is a challenge there. So what we will certainly propose to them… is some adjustments between Friday and Saturday for next year,” he added.

“So we working on that right now, because we want Friday to be as big as Saturday is. So start with two big days and then strategically look at the rest of the days,” he stressed.