WITH high school competitions acting as a feeder ground for national teams in the majority of local sports, ISSA President Keith Wellington is calling on sporting associations to assist with the funding of their respective competitions so as to further develop athletes.

The 2024-2025 school year recently came to a close, marking the end of numerous ISSA-organised competitions across a wide range of sports. Throughout the year students from the urban and rural area institutions participated in events such as football, athletics, cricket, basketball, netball, volleyball, and table tennis.

Historically, the standout athletes from the respective competitions are called up for national duty, whether for senior or junior competitions.

With that in mind, Wellington says it’s only fair that local sporting bodies start or strengthen their partnership with ISSA.

“There needs to be a way where these national associations, when they get funding, they can filter that down to us and allow for the development of the cohort of athletes that they really depend on,” he told the Jamaica Observer.

“There’s really no national team without a heavy reliance on what happens in our competitions at the junior level. Particularly, track and field, cricket, football — and even the other minor sports — certainly depend exclusively on what happens at the schoolboy and schoolgirl level. They need to look at how they can find funding for youth development and channel some of those resources to what happens at ISSA.”

A large part of ISSA’s earnings come from corporate sponsorship, including from the Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association/GraceKennedy Boys’ and Girls’ Athletics Championships as well as the Manning Cup and daCosta Cup under-19 football competitions.

While grateful for the continued investment, Wellington says more funding will be needed.

“We’re finding it a little bit more expensive to run the various sports, based on the economy and where it’s going,” he said. “We’re really not doing much better than in the past in terms of comfort level but we’re happy that we’ve been able to maintain the support for the students and getting these competitions going.”

Despite the financial challenges, Wellington says he was pleased with the execution of the respective competitions during the last school year. He does, however, want certain things addressed before the 2025-2026 school year begins.

“We are always grateful when we can come to an end of a cycle of providing opportunities for our student athletes,” he said. “Generally, we are satisfied that we were able to meet most of our objectives. There are some areas that we believe we can do a little bit better with across our various competitions.

“One of the areas we are hoping that will improve is the communication between schools and ISSA. We know that we have a channel of communication but sometimes information gets lost along the way, especially between the schools and the respective coaches.”

The Manning and daCosta Cup competitions will kick off the new school year in September.