ST James schools Cornwall College and Irwin High have welcomed the formalisation of a working arrangement between their sports departments, specifically football, and Jamaica Premier League (JPL) club Montego Bay United (MBU).

The schools inked a memorandum of understanding (MOU) at a brief signing ceremony at iTel offices in Freeport, St James, on Thursday, cementing an initial five-year agreement which the club says charts a clear path for players from the schools who wish to compete in the JPL.

A release from MBU said the partnership, which has been a few years in the making, will cover a joint match and training calendar combining Inter-secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) schoolboy competitions, PFJL age group fixtures, tournaments and regional events.

MBU will make coaches, analysts, sports scientists, and medical staff available to each school’s football programme, along with video analysis, physiotherapy and performance- data tools.

There will alsao be free use of MBU training and match-day facilities for scheduled training, plus official inter-school matches and MBU youth activities, with below-market rates for additional use.

Beyond football, the release said the schools will benefit from collaboration in track and field, racquet sports, aquatics, gym and conditioning, including access to The Hive, a new hospitality complex to be built at the Montego Bay Sports Complex.

Dr Richard Meggo, chairman of the board at Cornwall College and the school’s sports director, said the close physical proximity of the school and MBU’s predecessors, Seba United, gave them some “commonalities geographically”.

“Today is a good day for us to have this partnership and this collaboration.

As I said, it’s synergistic and it can all [work] to the benefit of western Jamaica and, ultimately, Jamaican football,” Meggo said.

Meggo also said there is more to the arrangement than football.

“I want to say this partnership is not just about football, although football is a cornerstone.

It involves multiple disciplines that the schools are going to benefit from [given] this arrangement today,” he said.

Victor Newsome, principal of Irwin High, said his school, which is only 20 years old and relatively new, had started to make an impact, especially in football, and had been benefiting from the partnership.

“We see sports at Irwin as an avenue for social impact in our communities.

We have seen where it would have helped some of our boys to transition, especially in football, and for that I am grateful for this partnership with Montego Bay United.

“So far, the partnership has been working well in our favour — and we are really appreciative of that — and we are looking forward to the extension of this partnership because we recognise the balance between the development of the students’ education as well as their development in extracurricular activity.

It is something that can only be positive, and that is what we want to do,” he said.

“We want to build on the positives so that we can channel our young minds in the right direction so that they will be able to get great opportunities to transition even further and continue, not only to develop themselves as individuals but even their communities and their families from where they come…” he said.

MBU Chairman Yoni Epstein described the agreement as a “monumental day for football in western Jamaica”.

“This is three years, going four years, in the making, and as the chairman of Montego Bay United, it is our duty to work alongside the schools in western Jamaica to continue to help develop football at a schoolboy, local, tier-two level, and at a senior level in the Jamaica Premier League,” Epstein said.

Epstein said they had seen positive early signs of the resurrection of football in the region.

“And this partnership that we are inking today is a major part of success and a major part of redeveloping football in western Jamaica to be the champions that we were of yesteryear, and start to demand some of that respect again as to what western Jamaica has for football,” he said.