Track and field season heats up

THE 2022 local track and field season will step up a notch tomorrow with three meets. The National Stadium will host the Camperdown Classics, the King of the Road Throws will be held at Excelsior High School, while the Milo Western Relays is on at G.C. Foster College. The first two will start at 8:30 a.m., while the Milo Relays is scheduled to get under way at 11 a.m.

With the ISSA Boys and Girls’ Championships just eight weeks away, most attention will be centred around high-school competition at all the meets. At G.C. Foster College, both Edwin Allen High and Kingston College (KC), the early favourites for Champs, look set to sweep all relays as most of their main rivals will be in the Corporate Area competing. Edwin Allen’s quartet of Serena Cole, Tia and Tina Clayton, and Brandy Hall could create history when they take the track in the Class One 4x100 metres. All four created history two years ago in Class Two, producing the fastest-ever local high-school 4x100 metres time with an amazing 43.73 seconds clocking at the Gibson McCook Relays.

Cole and twins Tia and Tina were members of the World Junior record-breaking 4x100m team at the World Under-20 Championships last summer in Nairobi, Kenya, after a brilliant 42.93 run. With Hall now set to join her teammates once again in Class One, a sub-43-second time is likely.

KC have a very strong Class One sprinting squad which includes Nkrumie Bouwahjgie, Tajae Francis, Adrian Kerr and Nicholas Francis, and they could also do something special in the event. The 17th staging of the Camperdown Classics has attracted more than 1,000 high-school and senior athletes. Female action will begin at 8:30 a.m., while the males will take the track at 1:30 p.m. Some of the country’s top senior male athletes will contest the 400m at this venue. They include Jaheel Hyde, Tyquendo Tracy, Michael O’Haro and Oblique Seville, who will be joined by the Great Britain pair of Zharnell Hughes and Miguel Francis.

Some of the high-school teams down to compete are Hydel, St Jago, Jamaica College, Calabar, Excelsior and St Jago. The events down to be contested here are the 100m, 400m, 800m, 4x100m, 4x400m, 4x800m, high jump and triple jump.

At Excelsior High, the events down to take place are discus, shot put and javelin throw for both males and females.