BYDGOSZCZ, Poland — It wasn’t the way he hoped to end his junior career, fouling all three attempts in the qualifying rounds of the men’s long jump on yesterday’s opening day of the IAAF World Under-20 Championships at Zawiszaw Stadium in Bydgoszcz, Poland, but team captain Obrien Wasome has chosen to look at the positives.

Despite being bothered by a groin injury since April and finishing fourth in both the long and triple jumps at the JAAA National Junior Championships a month ago, Wasome was included in the 39-member team and named captain.

He had hoped to go out with a bang and extend his string of impressive results but “I guess it wasn’t my day”, he told the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

“I took back my marker for each run up, but I still fouled, so it wasn’t my day,” Wasome reiterated, before adding: “I finished feeling healthy, there was no problems with my groin, it did not act up at all.”

The first man to jump 16.00m at the Penn Relays had mixed feelings as his junior career ended. “It was a sad way to end my junior career. It is a good feeling to know I finished healthy, but sad that I did not make the finals, but a lesson to carry me with and transition into the senior and college ranks.”

Wasome, the silver medallist in the long jump at the Youth Olympic Games in 2014, has accepted a track and field scholarship at the University of Texas and he said he was “excited to be going to Texas and to start competing”.

After getting several scholarship offers, he chose Texas because “that was where I felt most comfortable, when I went there for my visit, it just felt right”.

— Paul Reid