St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS) and Cornwall College were crowned the best Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association Under-16 and Under-14 schoolboy teams with wins over Calabar High and St George’s College, respectively, as rural teams dominated at Stadium East yesterday.

STETHS defeated Calabar High 5-4 on penalties after the game ended 1-1 in normal time, while Cornwall College clipped St George’s College 2-1 as the rural team made a clean sweep of the junior titles.

In fact, only Kingston College’s win in the all-island Champions Cup averted a clean sweep by the rural teams as Clarendon College successfully defended their Olivier Shield crown.

In the feature encounter, Kenoy Williams gave STETHS an eighth-minute lead from the penalty spot after Calabar’s goalkeeper Ramieze McKoy let slip a ball from his grasp then fouled Govasta Edmond.

But the outstanding Christopher Ainsworth pulled Calabar level on the stroke of half-time, firing home in the 40th minute. The boys from Red Hills Road should have won the match in normal time but Armani Hine’s brilliant free-kick hit the crossbar before goalkeeper Mowey Morgan gathered at the second attempt.

After 80 minutes the score read 1-1 and it was on to the dreaded penalty kicks which ended in sudden death victory for STETHS.

Dante Campbell, Collin Powell, Kenoy Williams, Damion Cowan, and Clifton Blake netted for STETHS, as Chemar Jerman missed Calabar’s third kick.

Isaac Clarke, Ty-reece Fairweather, Tariq Foster, and Armani Hines scored for Calabar, while the impressive Christopher Ainsworth missed, along with Jemarly Terrelonge.

Winning Coach Donovan Stone, who played on STETHS’s winning 1999 daCosta Cup and Olivier Shield team, was elated.

“It’s a tremendous achievement being a past student and to win a title is a wonderful feeling,” said Stone.

“These are the youngsters that we will see two to three years’ time and I think in terms of development we are doing a wonderful job at the grass-roots level,” he added, pointing out that STETHS’s Under-14 team also reached the rural final and lost to Cornwall College.

Meanwhile, in the curtain-raiser, Cornwall College edged St George’s College 2-1 and were crowned the best Under -14 schoolboy team in Jamaica.

Tijani McLeod gave Cornwall College a 17th-minute lead after St George’s College’s goalkeeper D’Jone Davis allowed the ball to slip through his legs and which allowed him the easiest of tasks in kicking into an empty goal.

Dante Escoffery then doubled Cornwall College’s lead in the 23rd minute before the impressive Matthew Spence pulled one back for St George’s College in the last minute (70th).

It was a deserved victory for Cornwall College as they looked the more purposeful and more threatening throughout.

Their pacy attackers — Escoffery, who was the Western Championships Class Four, 80m hurdles winner last season, and Zachery Cox, a sprinter who won Prep Championships double two years ago — proved lethal down the flanks and through the middle.

It was Cornwall College’s second all-island title in the last four years and winning Coach Christopher Mitchell was extremely happy.

“This is my third title in four years and it means a lot. Last year we lost to Garvey Maceo and we decided then that this year we will go for the trophy and we believed that this belongs to Cornwall College,” said Mitchell.

“We have a nice little programme going at Cornwall College and we are one of the few schools who don’t recruit a lot of boys as we build from Under-14 up,” he noted.