THE expected increase in costs to transport athletes back and forth between the National Stadium in St Andrew and their school bases for the ongoing ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships, particularly for the schools outside of the Corporate Area, might have been overstated, according to findings by the Jamaica Observer.

With the new protocols adopted by the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) to help prevent spread of the novel coronavirus at Champs, teams were asked not to keep all their athletes at the same place for the duration of the five-day event.

The suggestions by ISSA was that only the athletes who were competing on a particular day should be in Kingston, and as soon as they have completed their competition schedule they should be sent home.

Also, athletes who are starting their schedules later in the week should be brought in at a later time, as well.

However, given the small sizes of some teams — some with between one and 10 athletes — the shuttle system was not applicable, but according to others the lower cost of accomodation balanced out the addtional cost of transportation.

Keith Wellington, headmaster of St Elizabeth Technical High School (STETHS), the largest contingent of any school outside of the Corporate Area, said they actually saved money with the shuttle system.

“It has not been more expensive for us as in 2019, [as] our arrangements for accommodation was a little expensive. And so this year it’s a little easier based on the way the schedule is set,” he said.

“And a number of events have been one-day events, [and that] allows for students to come in and compete and leave again as opposed to staying over for several days,” Wellington said.

He added: “While there are higher transportation costs, there is a reduction on accommodation costs.”

Switching to his role as ISSA president, Wellington said there were no plans to keep the restrictions on the numbers for next year.

“It’s the schedule that allows that, but I don’t think ISSA wants to necessarily have low numbers of students qualifying for Champs because it’s a national stage and a school competition, so you want to give as many persons as possible a chance. it’s inclusive,” he said.

“And a lot of the big schools will tell you that they identify talent in the rough who would probably not get to Champs if we had these stringent limitations,” Wellington added.

Back to his role as principal at STETHS, Wellington said the school has two buses. “One stays in Kingston to shuttle those who are in Kingston, and one that goes back to Santa Cruz each evening as we have our base at school – and both drivers are in the bubble,” he explained.

Sean Rhooms of Cornwall College said the shuttle system works for his school with about 20 athletes.

“We sent up the sprint hurdles on Monday as they were competing on Tuesday, then the school bus was able to take in more on Tuesday and return to Montego Bay on Wednesday with those who were done competing,” he stated.

Kenroy Halstead of Muschett said their biggest cost was shuttling their few athletes between the base and the stadium.

“We don’t have a school bus so we have to use taxis to get from the base to the stadium and that is a serious costs. [On Wednesday] we spent about $8,000,” he noted.