The annual 113-year-old high schools’ boys’ and girls’ athletics championships — the 2023 edition of which closed last Saturday — never fails to remind this newspaper of the dizzying accomplishments of the organisers, the Inter-secondary Schools’ Sports Association (ISSA).

School leaders who form ISSA — preceded decades ago by the the Inter-Secondary Schools Athletics Championship Committee — can boast of their organisation having had a nurturing impact on Jamaican athletes in a range of sporting disciplines dating back to the early 1900s.

Back in 1910, when ‘Champs’ first started as a boys-only event, track and field was primarily amateur in nature. Back then, we suspect, competitors were motivated most of all by love of school, though perhaps, just as is now the case, there may have been thoughts of sporting achievements boosting their chances of overseas tertiary education.

For sure though, more than a century ago when Jamaican high schools could be easily counted on the fingers, Boys’ Champs, organised by school principals, pushed many a Jamaican boy to national attention.

Among them was Mr Norman Manley, one of Jamaica’s seven National Heroes.

Such was the academic brilliance of Mr Manley — a Rhodes Scholar, later to be rated among the top legal advocates in the British Empire — he wouldn’t have needed sporting achievements to enter the revered Oxford University in Britain. But we can be certain that his extraordinary prowess in athletics, cricket, football, boxing, et al — honed as a student at Jamaica College — did him no harm at all.

Mr Manley’s achievements as a teenager at the very first Boys’ Champs and later — in events ranging from 100 yards to 880 yards as well as the long jump — are the stuff of legend.

In 1910, he won the 100-yard sprint in 10 seconds flat. That standard, unbroken for decades, was equalled by his son, Mr Douglas Manley, in 1941 when, we are told, the younger Manley beat Mr Herb McKenley — Olympic hero in 1948 and ’52 — into third place.

Since those days, as has been repeatedly said here and elsewhere, Champs has been the platform for Jamaica’s greatest athletes.

As hinted earlier, track and field apart, ISSA provided the nurturing ground for some of this country’s greatest footballers, cricketers, netballers, et al.

Indeed, over many years, ISSA-organised schoolboy football competitions from September to December have rivalled Champs as the most popular on Jamaica’s sporting calendar.

With the local 2023 schools’ athletics season now out of the way, ISSA, backed by a small secretariat, is currently working overtime to complete a number of other sporting competitions by the end of April, prior to internal and external exams in high schools.

We hear that the ISSA National Under-19 Volleyball Championships are now complete with Knox College having won the girls’ category, while Wolmer’s Boys are the top male team.

In cricket, St Elizabeth Technical High School retained the all-rural Grace Headley Cup, beating May Day High in the three-day final completed on Thursday, while Wolmer’s Boys and St Jago High are through to the final of the urban Grace Shield. The knockout Twenty-20 cricket competition awaits the top cricket-playing schools.

Among those ISSA competitions ongoing are hockey, table tennis and girls’ football.

Hats off to ISSA for their exemplary role as a cornerstone of Jamaican sport.