Good Innovations for Schools Athletics 2024
It is often said, ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’ This phrase is usually interpreted to mean that when circumstances place one in a situation that must necessarily be addressed with a sense of urgency, it is the case, more often than not, that the individual brings his/her creative skills to bear and emerges with something that positively impacts the scenario and the future.
A cursory reflection on the development of the annual schools’ track and field competitions readily reveals the growing popularity of the sport of athletics across the nation in all aspects.
Over the past several years Team Athletics St Vincent and the Grenadines (TASVG) has systematically nurtured the sport by procuring equipment and distributing them amongst schools and communities, engaged growing numbers of individuals as coaches, administrators, and technical officials, all of whom continue to contribute, in no small measure, to the broader national, and, in some cases, regional and international, development of the sport.
What we are witnessing in St Vincent and the Grenadines is a continued forward march that leaves athletics as the most successful sport practised in St Vincent and the Grenadines, raising, and sustaining an international profile of which we should all be decidedly proud.
Equipment & Facilities
TASVG has significantly enhanced its stock of athletics equipment over the years. The organisation has procured the Meet Manager online system that allows for the ordering of the entries for all events at all competitions in quick time. Entries are appropriately structured, and lanes allocated within a few hours of the closing of the established deadlines. This allows schools to inform their athletes of their lane assignments well ahead if the day(s) of the competition.
There is also a photo-finish system that is in place which allows results to be shown on screen as soon as each race is completed. This also allows queries to be quickly resolved through a quick review of the entire results’ footage.
The photo-finish, timekeeping and meet management systems allow for detailed results and the allocation of points to individual athletes and their houses and/or clubs after each event. These rankings can be update during the competition, facilitating the flow of information to the patrons and generating excitement in the race for bragging rights. It is also the case that the final rankings by individual athletes and houses/clubs are available immediately following the final event of any competition.
Athletes at school and in clubs around the country today, have access to more throwing implements, starting blocks, hurdles, high jump standards and bars, than ever before in the history of the sport in this country, provided, for the most part, by TASVG. This includes the Grenadines.
Efforts are continuing regarding the acquisition of running shoes for athletes, reducing the number of competitors running barefoot at competitions.
The schedule of track and field competitions continues to increase as athletes demand greater opportunities to train and compete in the season.
Admittedly, the provision of a synthetic track and Diamond, has led to heightened interest in the sport, amongst parents, guardians, and the public.
Everywhere, athletes are found in training for some form of athletics competition and more persons are interested in establishing clubs to sustain interest in the sport and significantly improve performances.
More Vincentian athletes are being recruited at Colleges in Jamaica than ever before and the chances of students accessing athletics scholarships continue to get better.
Increased interest and participation
Over the past two decades the interest in and participation in track and field athletics have yielded the formation of new clubs focusing on the sport. Effective 2024, only clubs and unattached athletes would be allowed to contest the Wendell Hercules National Championships in May. The importance of forming a proper club structure is critical to the sport’s future in St Vincent and the Grenadines. Such structures will positively impact the succession planning that is integral to the future of the TASVG.
Several innovations have already occurred while others are just emerging. All of these will facilitate sustained growth and development of both the sport and the organisations that are part of its structure.
Bethel High School
Thanks to Theon Gordon, at the time the Physical Education teacher at the Bethel High School (now the Campden Park Secondary) and then principal, Mrs Pompey, we witnessed the introduction of afternoon to evening Inter House Athletics Championships at secondary schools in St Vincent and the Grenadines.
Importantly, the intention was not just to have the competition in the evening. It was much more comprehensive in nature. The plan was to engage the school in an activity that brought all its stakeholders, past and present, together. All aspects of the competition were to be managed by past students or teachers.
Not surprisingly, the initial new Campden Park Secondary Annual Athletics Championships was so successful that it spurred other educational institutions to follow suit, a phenomenon that is continuing.
Central Leeward Secondary School (CLSS)
Chester Morgan, Physical Education teacher, and the then principal of the Central Leeward Secondary School (formerly the Barrouallie Secondary School), not only introduced afternoon into evening athletics championships, but organised it on a Saturday.
The turnout at the first edition of the Saturday competition of the CLSS was massive. There were thousands of spectators who thoroughly enjoyed themselves. There was also great participation by former students and their parents who saw themselves as part of sporting history, not only of the school, but of all St Vincent and the Grenadines.
On two occasions thus far, the CLSS has organised its mega-athletics championships on Sunday afternoons, much to the delight of track and field aficionados.
Girls High School/St Vincent Grammar School
The absence of access to the synthetic track at Diamond has given rise to another piece of athletics history in St Vincent and the Grammar School.
For the first time, the joint athletics championships of the Girls High School/St Vincent Grammar School will be held on a Sunday, 3 March 2024. Given that these are the two largest secondary schools in the nation, the attendance should be huge and historic.
However, even before the day of the finals of the championships of the Girls High School/St Vincent Grammar School, the Girls High School introduced a novel feature that is truly innovate. Under the leadership of newly appointed principal, Latoya Deroche, and Physical Education teacher, Santa Cruickshank, the school awarded points to the attendance of past students to the day on which they had their Assembly. Anxious to be part of the school alumni and of their respective houses to which they will always be attached, students came out in their numbers, with Moffett House, the last to have Assembly, amassing more than 400 former students in attendance.
Clearly, the innovation proved to be better than originally expected. We can expect that other schools may soon consider whether such an innovation would work for them.
One wonders whether, in the future, consideration would be given to awarding points to the past students for attending the athletics championships in their house colours.
Change Management
One of the major challenges of our times is change management.
We live in an age of the rapid creation of technological innovations, many of which threaten the old ways of living and behaving that we have come to see and accept as traditional. Our beliefs are changing and with this, our values, both impacting the members of society in almost immeasurable ways.
Life has become annoyingly uncomfortable for many in societies around the world.
Regardless of what we think of the changes taking place around us we have little choice but to navigate our lives through them, shaping and re-shaping our behaviours as we interact with the rest of society.
Athletics in St Vincent and the Grenadines may have taken a long time to get to where it is today, but evidence suggests that increasingly, the abundant talent that resides in our people will produce successive generations of outstandingly remarkable athletes.
Many athletes are still competing without shoes and would have appreciated the uneven grassed surface on which they have been compelled to compete in their respective athletics championships this year. They will need shoes for the synthetic surface for the Inter Primary and Inter Secondary Schools Athletics Championships scheduled for later this month – Heats and Finals. WE must continue to get help for more shoes for our athletes.
While we struggle to complete what is supposed to eventually be our national athletics/football stadium, we must nonetheless seek out the creation of at least one 400m synthetic surface in the east, west and central parts of the country and one in the Grenadines.
Athletics may well produce more scholarship winners in this country than any other sport if the work that has started continues.
We need more coaches, physical educators, administrators, physiotherapists, and sport psychologists. The emerging careers in sport are beginning to see infinite.
Our focus at the national level must be to leverage the opportunities that are fast emerging for those interested. For many of our students in a country with consistently high levels of unemployment and underemployment and where, unfortunately, sport is still too often seen as frivolity, the time has come to keep pace with change, if not be ahead to the curve. Tomorrow is already much too late.
