Excelsior High and St Catherine High waltzed into the semi-finals of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Walker Cup with easy wins over Denham Town and Calabar High, respectively, at the Stadium East field yesterday.

In the curtain-raiser, Excelsior blanked Denham Town 2-0, while St Catherine brushed aside Calabar 3-0.

In action at the Spanish Town Prison Oval, Hydel High defeated Mona High 3-2 and Cumberland High edged St Jago 1-0.

Excelsior and St Catherine will meet in one semi-final, while Hydel High and Cumberland High meet in the other next Thursday. The final is set for November 15.

In front of a handful of spectators at the Stadium East facility, Damorney Hutchinson grabbed the headlines banging in two goals in the 50th and 56th minutes as Excelsior ran out comfortable winners over Denham Town.

Excelsior’s coach Daniel Riley was pleased with his team’s performance and was thankful for the victory.

“It’s the Walker Cup and it’s only three games… now we are into the semi-finals and we taking it one day at a time,” he said.

He continued: “Hats off to the players as we had a better second half than the first. In the second half, they realised they can play much better than Denham Town so they took the initiative and got the goals.”

With Denham Town’s season now officially over, their coach Omar Edwards had high praises for his team for an encouraging season.

“It’s not a bad performance overall as we played some good football at times,” said Edwards.

“Today we conceded two early second-half goals and the team eventually gave up,” he added.

In the feature encounter, the highest ranked team left in the Walker Cup competition, St Catherine High, put in an ordinary first half, but put Calabar to the sword in the second stanza with three well-taken goals.

Javaughn Cole opened the scoring in minute 57, before Rhajnal Brown doubled the advantage 10 minutes later. Kamau Davis put the icing on the cake in minute 70.

Winning coach Anthony Patrick said after his team gave Calabar an early look in, they took control and never looked back.

“We took full control of the second half and it should be a wider margin, but we are pleased that we are in the semi-finals,” said Patrick.

With Calabar’s season concluding without much support from their normally loyal fans, coach David Lalor said he had hoped for a victory to gain more playing time as he looked forward to next season.

“It wasn’t one of the best of our games but give them credit, they tried to play football at some point and it’s a work in progress and come next year we hope to do better,” said Lalor.

— Howard Walker