Champions Jamaica College (JC) and Edwin Allen will start the defence of their respective titles as the 110th staging of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships gets underway this morning at the National Stadium.

The first event, the preliminaries of the steeplechase, is set to start at 9:00.

While Edwin Allen are odds on favourites to run away with the girls’ race and win a ninth-straight title, the boys’ section promises to be closer than last year when just fewer than 15 points separated JC and Kingston College (KC), the top two schools who are expected to battle it out over the next five days.

After being cancelled in 2020, days after the first case of the novel coronavirus was reported in Jamaica, and being held behind closed doors last year, the next five days are expected to be a celebration of track and field as fans will be allowed back inside the stadium to watch the championships live.

There will be no final on Tuesday’s first day, but the main protagonists will start lining up for the first finals which are scheduled for Wednesday. There will be 17 finals on the day, including the 100m and 1,500m races in all classes.

The day’s schedule will see the preliminaries in the 100m and 400m, 1,500m and 400m hurdles; the boys’ Class One and Two long jumps; the girls’ Class One high jump, javelin Open, Class One discus throw, Class One shot put and Class One long jump.

A year ago, Jamaica College were chasing the then title holders Kingston College. But the script has been flipped this year, and the ‘dark blues’ will be the ones wearing the bright red bulls eye on their backs.

JC Head Coach Neil Harrison, while acknowedging that Kingston College “should be seen as favourites” based on the season so far, was quick to add that retaining the Mortimer Geddes trophy on Saturday evening “is not beyond” his team.

“Champs is won on the day, the physical preparations are over, now we have to start honing the mental side,” Harrison told the Jamaica Observer on the weekend,

Having “tasted victory last year”, he said his charges will not be giving up.

“The committmnet from the team all year has been good and their approach to training, day in and day out, shows they know what it will take to win,” he said.

With all that said, Harrison conceded that while his team is “loaded with quality performers”, his main challengers, Kingston College, have depth.

Leaford Grant, the Kingston College head coach, was quietly confident when he spoke to the Observer.

“Yes, we can win Champs this year,” he said, adding that he and his staff had not done any points projections.

“It would not matter if we win by one point or 100 points,” he said.

Grant said he was expecting points from just about every area.

“That is the beauty of this team,” he said proudly. “We should get points from jumps, throws, we should be picking up points all through the competition.”

The KC coach said they expect their Class Three athletes to come up big as all season long they had been outstanding. He went out on a limb to say that his Class One 4x100m team could cause a big upset.

“We have not won anywhere all year with the Class One 4x100m team, not at Western Relays, not at Gibson Relays but I feel they will spring a surrpise at Champs,” he said.

Calabar High, who were third last year and second at the previous staging after winning the title between 2012 and 2018, will be hoping to maintain a top-three spot this year.

Errol Messias, who was named interim head coach this year after long time Coach Michael Clarke was forced to step own because of health-related issues, admitted his team was in transition.

“[We are] in a rebuilding mode but we are still going to be doing our best and hope for a top-three spot,” Messias said.

Edwin Allen’s Head Coach Michael Dyke will have a big team of 70 athletes, 11 more than the squad that scored 340 points last year and won by just over 30 points.

The Edwin Allen team is so strong, especially in Class One, that Dyke has the luxury of not running his star sprint twins, Tina and Tia Clayton, in the Class One 200m. He is resting them instead for what could be an attempt at breaking the Class One 4x100m relay record of 44.17 seconds set in 2014 by another Edwin Allen team.

Bethany Bridge, who was second behind Rusea’s High’s Aaliyah Francis, and Brandy Hall who was sixth last year, will instead contest the 200m for Edwin Allen High.

There should be another battle between St Catherine neigbours St Jago High and Hydel High for second spot as just eight points separated them last year.

Both would have lost a lot of scorers to graduation, however, the battle is expected to be just as fierce.