Orville Higgins | Champs more prestigious than CARIFTA

Earlier this week, some of my colleagues at KLAS Sport FM 89 and I had what eventually turned out to be a quite heated discussion. The moot was “Is ‘Champs’ (ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships) a more prestigious meet than the Carifta Games to the young athletes who competed in both?

My simple answer was yes. My colleagues countered with the argument that a high school meet in Jamaica cannot be considered more prestigious than a regional meet involving athletes from all over the Caribbean.

Consistent with what all good debaters do, I went for the definition of the word prestigious. What I found was “inspiring respect and admiration; having high status.”

I could not see how one could not argue that Champs had more respect and admiration attached to it than the Carifta games.

I started by putting these questions to my stubborn colleagues. Why is it that Jamaican coaches peaked their athletes for Champs and not for Carifta? Why are personal bests more likely to happen at Champs, than at Carifta? Why is it that the big athletes in Jamaica, at times, will miss out on CARIFTA, but they will never opt out of Champs? Why would all that be true if they did not see Champs as the bigger and more prestigious meet?

I should have won the argument from there. My co-workers should have given up, but they dug their heels in and tried to put up a fight. I then reminded them that virtually all of our Jamaican high school track and field stars over the years performed at both meets, but what will we remember them most for, their performance at Champs or Carifta? The exploits of athletes like Usain Bolt, Jermaine Gonzales, Daniel England, Anneisha McLaughlin-Whilby, Michael Ohara, and Christopher Taylor are all etched into our minds.

The performances of these athletes at Champs is almost part of our folklore. Do we even remember what they did at Carifta?

“And what of the crowds,” I asked my colleagues, who were by now metaphorically hanging onto the ropes. Why do we have 30,000 noisy hysterical supporters at one meet, while we may have four or five thousand at the other? Why do scouts pour into Champs in far greater numbers than the Carifta Games, if it was not a bigger and more prestigious meet?

The argument that a regional meet involving countries MUST be more prestigious than a high school meet does not hold up. Sometimes the “smaller” competition carries far more significance to all concerned than the bigger competition.

The ISSA/Digicel Manning Cup and ISSA/WATA daCosta Cup finals, for example, are usually better attended and played with more gusto by the players than the Olivier Shield, which is supposed to be “the symbol of schoolboy supremacy.” It may not make sense, but it is just the way it is.

By now, my colleagues were gasping for air. They could not come up with any arguments that stood up to rational scrutiny. Then, I cruelly came up with the coup de grace.

One of those arguing against me was the sports editor himself. I reminded him how he treated both meets.

For Champs he arranged a strong panel and live continuous coverage for the last two days, while for Carifta, we may be lucky if we get four “updates” for the day. That did it! They did not concede but only because they did not have to!