SANTA CRUZ, St Elizabeth — The Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) has guaranteed that “fully vaccinated” fans wishing to attend the April 4-9 staging of the GraceKennedy-sponsored National Boys’ and Girls’ Championships will have a fair opportunity to get tickets well ahead of the annual track and field event.

Keith Wellington, president of ISSA, said they had been given the opportunity to develop a system tailored specifically for them, one that he described as “brilliant”, adding that the time they have had to plan for the event would ensure a smooth process.

The ISSA boss is promising a speedy delivery of the new system and said by the end of this month prospective patrons will have tickets to Champs.

“I would think that by the end of March if you have not yet had your tickets for Champs then it means there are no more tickets available,” he told the Jamaica Observer at Saturday’s staging of the County of Cornwall Athletic Association (COCAA) Western Champs held at St Elizabeth Technical Sports Complex.

He also said the system will be open to not just local fans, but also those in the Diaspora.

There has been anxiety with the ticketing system since approval was given by the Government for fans to attend sporting events and the issues associated with selling tickets for the recent Gibson/McCook Relays at the National Stadium which resulted in far fewer than the approved 10,000 spectators getting into the stadium.

Organisers admitted to “frustrations” with the system that was used.

Wellington said he was confident that ISSA will be able to avoid those frustrations and will deliver a better system.

“I think we will be able to do better,” he told the Observer. “We have been given latitude to come up with a system that works for us, so we will assume full responsibility for whatever happens with the distribution of tickets this year for Champs.”

The difference for ISSA, Wellington said, is time to adequately plan.

“I think the Gibson organisers were given a very short time. The permission came late and the lead time they had going into Gibson was a little less than we have. They used a system that was not necessarily designed for Gibson Relays,” he surmised.

“On the other hand, we have gotten permission a lot earlier and the Government has committed to working with us to put in a system that works best for us,” he said, adding that the system will require people to register with ISSA.

“We will try to minimise the interface between the Amber system and the individual patron, so the patron will do most interactions with the system created by ISSA and we will interact with the Amber system more through batch processing and administration,” he explained.

Wellington said he could not go too far into the details as there was still a lot more planning to do.

“We are going to be discussing the finer details with another partner that we will have in terms of the transactional side of it, in terms of the purchase of tickets. We will have another partner that we will be working with as well, but we are confident that we will have a system in place that will work brilliantly; all we ask is that persons who want to attend Champs understand they must use the system, so there will not be any shortcuts or any favours granted as to how persons will be able access Champs,” Wellington said.

He told the Observer that ISSA has already been informed about the number of spectators who will be allowed but “we can’t say yet until we have discussed it with some of our stakeholders. We have to reveal the numbers to them, but we will have people at Champs. There will be a lot of noise at Champs; the atmosphere will be back to where it used to be and people will have a good opportunity to get tickets, if they are fully vaccinated.”