The recent announcement of the cancellation of high school sports for the Christmas term by the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) will have far-reaching implications beyond just the playing of sports such as football and netball for the rest of the year.

One of the casualties of the cancellation of sports are the coaches, many of whom rely heavily on the income they receive from coaching at the high school level.

On Monday, ISSA officially announced the cancellation of the season’s sports competitions due to the spike in COVID-19 cases on the island and the belief that it would be unsafe to attempt to have competitive sports anytime soon.

A lot of the coaches who are employed by the schools are independent of the institution and are therefore not likely to be on any sort of payroll, other than in their capacity as coaches, although some are actual members of the faculty of staff, in addition to being coaches.

For those who are not faculty, the situation is dire in a number of cases and so there has been an appeal by some of these coaches for consideration by their “employers”.

Karumie Huie, an assistant coach at Excelsior High, was a member of the Hydel High coaching staff when they won their first schoolboy football title ever, the Walker Cup, in 2018.

Huie made an appeal on behalf of all coaches, not just for football.

“I am appealing to all the principal and heads of sport departments, in light of the cancellation of all sport for this year due to the pandemic [novel coronavirus]. I am begging you all, if we can help the coaches, not just for football [but] for all sports. I know the schools are having their own difficulties also, but I’m just appealing for your assistance.”

Kimathi-Nkrumah Abeiku Makonnen, who coaches both the Denham Town High School Manning Cup team and schoolgirl football team says his involvement with the students, as well as many other coaches, extend way beyond the football pitch.

“My philosophy is ‘life lesson through sports’, teaching the sport from a holistic standpoint, so teaching this game is not only from a tactical or technical point of view, which mainly takes place on the 120 × 90 perimeter field.”

Makonnen explained the roles that coaches all over must play from year to year in the quest todevelop the student athlete.

“I also interact with these student athletes before, during and after school about none sport matters. Most of these interactions take place inside their communities; these discussions most times aren’t about the sports they play, but mainly about how they can achieve a proper education, while at the very same time stay focused on the positives and don’t get consumed by the decadence of violence. He or she will need proper guidance from their coaches in order to manoeuvre around them.

“Therefore, not paying a coach because of the virus, prematurely stops the coach from going on the field to teach that sport. This isn’t the right thing to do and is so not the right approach because most, if not all, of these coaches must morph into parents or guardian most times, way more than they do as a coach, and these transitions take place outside of the sports that these student athletes take part in.

“Hence, just paying us only when the sports are in season is archaic and needs to be changed,especially in this time of this pandemic.”