Top boys’ teams to clash at Corporate Area meet

Track and field fans in the Corporate Area are in store for some special performances today and tomorrow as the top three boys’ teams that are expected to fight for top honours among at this month’s ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Championships Athletics Championships will be in action.

Calabar High, Kingston College, and Jamaica College will do battle at the Digicel Corporate Area Development meet, the final meet in the Grand Prix series before the grand final at GC Foster College next Saturday.

Today’s opening day, will get under way at 9 a.m., which will see some 16 finals down to be contested, 10 in the field and six on the track. At the end of the meet, the top male and female teams will walk away with $250,000 each, with second-place finishers receiving $100,000 and third place getting $50,000. In addition, the winners of the championship events will automatically qualify for next week’s grand final, where the top teams will walk away with $1 million each. Calabar and Excelsior High are defending champions.

It is the competition on the boys’ side that will attract most attention. Former champions Jamaica College and Kingston College are hoping to dethrone defending champions Calabar and will want to send out strong messages over the next two days that their challenges are real.

Calabar, on the other hand, will want to prove that they are once again out of reach as they will want to stamp their class and show their authority.

Calabar’s outstanding thrower, Kai Chang, who mined gold in the discus at last year’s IAAF World Under-20 Championships in Tampere, Finland, will be one of those who will be competing in the field events today. He will compete in the Class One boys discus event, where he has a season’s best of 61.46 metres. This was done at the Youngster Goldsmith meet.

The six track finals will be held in the morning session, with the Class One girls 1500m set to get things under way at 9 o’ clock. This will be followed by the Class Three 1500m at 9:50 a.m.

Main focus will be on the Class Two and Three events, where the best among high school teams in the country are expected to compete. In Class Two, the Kingston College duo of twin brothers Giovounni and Gianni Henry will clash with Jamaica College’s J’Voughann Blake, the favourite for the event. Calabar’s David Martin is also down to compete.

Class One should be a cracker. Calabar’s pair of Kevroy Venson and Rivaldo Marshall will be aiming for a one-two finish, but Kingston College’s captain, Tarees Rhoden, and teammate Amos Beadle, along with Jamaica College’s Fabian Campbell and Detroy Stewart, will be hoping to crash the Calabar party in what is expected to be a very “hot” contest.