Neil Harrison says feedback about JC future still pending
TOP Jamaican high school track and field coach Neil Harrison says he is still awaiting a response from Jamaica College over his future as head coach of the school’s track and field programme, following a meeting with Principal Wayne Robinson at the Hope Road institution on Friday morning.
Harrison, who took over the Jamaica College (JC) programme in 2018 after leaving rivals Kingston College (KC), told the Sunday Observer on Saturday that he had met with Robinson, whom he said was to have got back to him but did not say what the timeline for the response was supposed to have been.
News broke on Friday evening that Harrison’s contract as head coach would not be renewed but the coach said he was still awaiting official documentation from the school.
“The principal met with me on Friday morning,” he said. “We had a conversation, and he promised to present his thoughts in writing. I’m still awaiting the document from the principal and by the afternoon I saw the article in the Observer, so I really have nothing more to say about that.”
Harrison, who is the only man to win titles in the daCosta Cup, with Clarendon College in 1991, and the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys‘Athletics Championships (Champs), with JC in 2021 — the first Champs held after the COVID-19 pandemic — would not be drawn into any conversation about the “tone” of the meeting with the JC principal, saying he is still waiting feedback from the school.
Harrison came to the fore while coaching the Munro College team which produced several outstanding talents, including Delano Williams who won the men’s 200m gold medal at the 2012 World Under-20 Championships before switching allegiance to Great Britain.
He is also credited with switching Akeem Bloomfield from the 100m to 400m while at KC, and saw him setting the ISSA Champs record at 44.93 seconds.
In August 2018 the Jamaica Observer broke the news that Harrison had just returned to the island after being part of the Jamaican coaching set-up at the World Under-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland.
After a long and fruitful stay at Munro College where he also coached football, Harrison, who represented Tivoli Gardens High School in track and field and who competed at Champs, stepped up to KC in 2014.
