SOME people have expressed concern about the lack of girls competing in football competitions, and Keith Wellington, president of Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA), has challenged other organisations to work together to help expand the female game.

Wellington told the
Jamaica Observer he anticipates that the number of teams participating in this year’s ISSA/TIP Friendly Society School Girl Football competition to continue to expand, as it has in previous years.

A total of 43 teams are currently participating in the competition which got underway on February 9, 2024 with a double-header at Anthony Spaulding Sports Complex.

The ISSA boss urged the football fraternity to step in and assist with more initiatives to foster growth.

“Well, I think the important thing from the ISSA perspective is that we [provide] the opportunity for them [schools] to compete,” he said.

“As an organisation we don’t really have the resources to organise development activities but what we do is provide the opportunity to compete, and so let’s hope that the Jamaica Football Federation (JFF) and other organisations provide opportunities for training, workshops, and so forth that will be geared towards their development but for us, we focus on competitions,” Wellington explained.

In an Observer publication from last October, Elaine Walker-Brown, the head of the JFF Women’s Committee, noted the importance of fostering development at the grass roots level. But she said that even with the growing success of the senior Reggae Girlz, Jamaica’s female football programme continues to lag due to lack of resources.

“We just need to push the development more — and right into the high school, into the community, at the club level — so that we see the growth and the development starting from the grass roots,” she explained.

“We need funding so that we can have the different programmes across the island to develop the youngsters. But if we don’t have the resources, we can’t do it. It’s not an administrative problem, it’s a funding problem,” she said, suggesting that the Michael Ricketts-led JFF, to some degree, has its hands tied.

Andrew Edwards, the chairman and technical director of Genesis Football Academy, said his academy has long supported the development of the girls’ game.

“From inception, we have always entertained girls, and now our numbers in the girls’ section are increasing. We have a few who have been to the Jamaica Under-14 and Under-15 teams, and right now we have some nice young ones, 11-12 years old, coming through again.”

He said they have participated in various girls’ competitions, and noted that, importantly, his academy is to host a regional tournament for girls on March 2 at Brooks Park in Manchester.

“We are always looking to build the women’s game; as a matter of fact, Genesis will be hosting a mini-version of the Concacaf Gold Cup.

“We are going to be hosting a mini-version of that competition in which we will have 12 teams who will represent the 12 participating countries and play in the same Concacaf tournament on a mini-scale over one day. We believe deeply that that is the future of football, certainly in terms of opportunities and prospects,” Edwards said.

Meanwhile, Wellington said he is particularly delighted with the number of young people participating in the high school girls football tournament.

“Based on what I am seeing in terms of the youthfulness of the players, I am pleased that you want to start in that age group to develop the talent. One of the things that have happened in the past is that there has been a recommendation that we have a youth competition, and right now it [competition] is open to under-19s so you will see a lot of these 12- and 13-year-olds competing in the under-19 competition. But, based on what I am seeing now, it may be a good idea to have some form of competition — let us say at the under-15 level — that allows the younger kids to participate within their own age group,” he said.

In the opener on Friday, last year’s beaten finalists Holmwood Technical defeated Glenmuir 11-0, while defending champions Excelsior got the better of St Andrew Technical High School 4-0 in the feature game.

“This is the highest number of schools competing in the last seven or eight years,” Wellington said.

“We had been interrupted by COVID. As a matter of fact, the very year COVID came we were in the middle of that competition — and we took a little time to get back to the norm.

“I think over the last three years we have had more schools each year and hopefully, as the years go by, we will get back to the norm which would be somewhere between 48 and 52 schools. I would want to see us surpass that 52 with another three years,” the ISSA president added.