St Jago High look set to defend their boys’ title at the Central Athletics Championships after overwhelming their opponents on the first day of the two-day championship.

After 25 events scored St Jago had amassed 274 points to lead second-placed Edwin Allen, who had 138 points, by all of 136 points. Clarendon College on 93 points, St Catherine High on 60 points and Vere Technical on 51 points round out the top five at the end of day one.

Four records were broken by the boys with St Jago being responsible for three of them.

Balvin Israel won the Class Two long jump with a new record of 7.02m, erasing the previous mark of 6.89m set by his schoolmate Kavion Kerr in 2018.

Demario Brown destroyed the Class Three high jump record of 1.65m set by Christoff Madden of Mount St Joseph in 2019 when he raised the bar to 1.80m.

Demario Prince emulated his namesake when he too registered a record in the Class Two high jump. He cleared 1.93m to erase the old mark of 1.90m set by Jordan Richards of Manchester High in 2020.

Christopher Young of Edwin Allen produced a massive throw of 61.60m to win the javelin, destroying his own record of 61.10m set last year.

There were four relays contested on the day, all of which were swept by the school from Monk Street.

They won the 4x100m Class One in 41.06secs, Class Two in 42.04 and Class Three in 46.06. They then ran against the clock to take the 1600m sprint medley in 3:38.63 minutes, ensuring they had a qualifying time for the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships next month.

The 400m hurdles, sprint hurdles, 200m, 800m, 5000m, 4x400m and triple jump are the events to be contested on today’s final day which is set to get under way at 1:00 pm.

— Dwayne Richards