A clash with the dates for the Jamaica International Invitational (JII) Meet, a World Athletics Continental Tour event, has forced the organisers of the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships to switch dates to late April.

This would be the third set of dates that have been proposed for the five-day championships that the organisers are seeking to put on after they were cancelled last year due to the onset of COVID-19.

Keith Wellington, president of ISSA, told the Jamaica Observer yesterday that during a meeting of the Champs committee held earlier in the day, “the decision was taken today to abandon the plans for Champs to be held at the end of March and we would revert to April 27-May 1, 2021”.

Originally, ISSA had set March 23-27 as the dates for Champs, but given uncertainty about the situation, had May 4-8 as alternate dates, in the event the March dates were not feasible. “When we checked with the JAAA (Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association), May 8 is set for the JII meet and that is a fixed date for the JAAA and World Athletics,” ISSA said.

The extension to COVID-19 protocols under the Disaster Risk Management Act that prohibits gatherings of more than 10 persons and which would hinder training and the staging of track and field meets also played a part in the decision. “We took the decision based on the fact that we have not started any development meets and therefore the preparation period for the athletes to finalise their preparations, and to be able to get qualified for Champs, would be too short,” Wellington added.

Earlier in the month, the Government had announced plans to lift the restrictions preventing the restart of sports, but a dramatic increase in new COVID-19 cases over the last week saw a quick turnaround on that decision and the Government tightening restrictions for another two weeks, ending February 26.

Wellington pointed to the upsurge in cases that saw just under 2,350 new cases between February 3-11, saying, “In addition, with the current spike in the [COVID-19] numbers we wanted to give it a few weeks to see if the numbers will settle down.”

— Paul Reid