To some it may seem minor, but to Excelsior High School a gift of a refrigerator from the past student association (PSA) was very much welcomed as a vital component to the school’s sports department.

In fact, the stainless steel commercial refrigerator valued at US$2,500 (approximately $375,000) is only the first item on a list of needs identified by the PSA, which is intent on improving the underfunded Sports Nutrition Centre at the Mountain View Avenue institution.

Cheryl Chin, the PSA’s director of sports, who is spearheading the fund-raising effort, pointed out that the proverbial gift list was drafted after engaging discussions with Xavier Gilbert, who heads the sports department, coupled with her own experience when volunteering with the football team.

With most of the fund-raising efforts by the previous PSA administration directed towards scholarships, Chin explained that she wanted to take a different approach as little or no support been forthcoming to assist the school to restore or refit equipment or infrastructure, particularly in the sports and nutrition centre.

“I was involved as a volunteer with Excelsior’s football programme and I recognised some deficits in terms of equipment that the sports department needed. so after being nominated an executive of the PSA, I decided to develop my mandate around projects that we can take on for the school that will have a greater or more meaningful impact on students’ lives,” Chin told the Jamaica Observer.

“So we decided that we needed to put the infrastructure in place to support them properly, because you can’t run a nutrition programme without having proper equipment in place. The fridge is the first step as we have a list of other things that we intend to gift the school,” she added.

Though still having some ways to go to achieve their goal, Chin believes with the recent installation of the refrigerator — acquired through donations from a select cross-section of alumni, locally and in the Diaspora — life will be a bit more comfortable in the centre which serves over 700 students-athletes.

The commercial refrigerator has the capacity to store perishable food items for over 200 people and will now enable the sports department to increase its food inventory, providing a wider variety of meals to students-athletes, especially, when in camp.

“During our regular pre-COVID school year there was like a little fridge in the kitchen and a regular freezer and they had issues because you find that the track and field team running their lunch programme and the football players were being fed as well and we just never had adequate space to purchase and store enough food to feed everybody or we just didn’t have enough space where we could coexist comfortably,” Chin reasoned.

“So we want to create an environment where multiple sporting disciplines can exist in a comfortable environment and again this is just the first step towards that. It is going to be a steady effort but eventually over a period of six to eight months we anticipate that we should be able to raise enough funds to buy the whole list of stuff that we plan to give them,” she noted.

On that note, Chin revealed that the focus now shifts to acquiring an ice maker and a commercial freezer to assist cold therapy treatment for injuries and provide hydration and recovery needs for the student-athletes during training and competitions.

Additionally, she says, the centre also needs a ventilation hood for the stoves and with the onset of COVID-19 and new protocols, the sports department, also requires equipment for laundering training and competition gear.

With Excelsior being one of, if not the only urban area school to participate in all Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) events, Chin says it is only fitting that they have a fully equipped centre and as such is calling on more past students to join the campaign to raise the estimated US$5,000 needed to purchase the other appliances.

“We are about two-thirds down the road in terms of acquiring an ice maker but basically you know how it is when people donate money they don’t have any idea how the money is spent and I think maybe that is why a lot of people are hesitant to give.

“So we just want to highlight that this is what we are doing, this is what we use your money to do and we are hoping that others will see and want to come on board and help us to complete this gift list,” Chin stated.

Meanwhile, Gilbert praised Chin and the PSA for the initiative.

“These donations serve as a big factor in terms of assisting our athletes to perform at their optimum. Once we can have the necessary things in place to keep our athletes happy and healthy to compete with the other schools, then the rest will be history.

“There is no other school that participates in the number of team sports that we do, so this initiative is tremendous and very fitting. We are just excited and very grateful to the PSA for the initiative so far, and we look forward to their continued support,” said Gilbert.