The Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) has given itself a passing grade for the execution of the schoolboy football season that was due to end on Saturday with the playing of the Olivier Shield game between Manning Cup winners Kingston College and daCosta Cup champions Garvey Maceo High.

That match was scheduled for St Elizabeth Technical Sports Complex in Santa Cruz.

The season, the first since 2019, started almost two months after the traditional early September kick-off date, and despite a shortened schedule, ran into January for the first time in living memory.

Additionally, approximately half of the usual over 100 schools took part in the competitions which have so far seen five different schools winning titles — Clarendon College won the ISSA Champions Cup, St Catherine High retained the Walker Cup Knockout (KO) and Edwin Allen won the Ben Francis KO, their first ever senior football title.

“Thought the team did an exceptionally good job,” Keith Wellington, president of ISSA, told the Jamaica Observer earlier week.

“By team I mean schools, players, match officials, venue operators, sponsors, media partners, government officials, ISSA. Everyone played their part in trying to make sure the season was a success! I would rate the effort a nine,” he added.

Wellington, however, played down the difficulty of the season.

“I don’t think it was difficult based on the effort of the team to make the dream work. It took a Herculean effort, but many hands made the work light,” he said.

There were highs and lows for ISSA, Wellington admitted, mostly due to the nove coronavirus pandemic.

“The low is definitely the spike in cases after Christmas, preventing us from having spectators inside the venues for the new year. The issues related to breaches of ISSA policy and competition rules were also disappointing,” noted the ISSA boss.

Among the highs is “getting through the competition without any readily identifiable cases associated with the competition, and being able to broadcast so many games was also significant,” Wellington said.

There is optimism, however, that things will return to normal come September when, he said, “we are hoping to resume our regular calendar at the start of the new school year”.