ISSA boss says all systems go
President of the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) Keith Wellington says all systems are in place for a very successful staging of the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships, which is set to begin today at the National Stadium.
The championships, Jamaica’s premier high school track and field event, is to end on Saturday. Kingston College are defending boys’ champions while Edwin Allen High are the girls’ title holders.
Wellington told the Jamaica Observer his organisation has worked assiduously over the past 12 months to make this year’s championships a very successful one.
“Obviously we have been planning for it since last year, and we have had a number of meetings ensuring that everything is in place. And we are confident that we will have a good start tomorrow [Tuesday] and we are anticipating a great Champs this year,” said Wellington.
“When you are having an event of this magnitude it will never be a 100 per cent ready [situation] but we are satisfied that where we are now, we will be able to get the job done at a very high level,” he said.
“I am expecting that all five days will be exceptional because every day we will have finals; and we will have more finals on each day than we would normally be accustomed to and so we expect the excitement to be spread across all five days,” Wellington stated.
The veteran school administrator, who is also the principal of St Elizabeth Technical High School, cautioned that people attending the championships will be required to adhere to the COVID-19 protocols which will be established during the five days of competition.
“What we want to do is to ensure that Champs remains a safe environment. It is not as if COVID no longer exists; we are aware that it is still around and therefore whatever we can do to ensure that we protect our patrons, athletes and officials, we are still going to trying to do it.
“There is no mask mandate or anything like that but we are still encouraging persons to be careful as they go about their activities each day,” he said.
