Champs 2022 | Bryan aiming to build Munro culture in track
Published:Wednesday | April 6, 2022 | 12:07 AMAudley Boyd/News Editor
WESTERN BUREAU:
AS AN athlete, Omar Bryan contributed to the rich sporting legacy at all-boy Munro College while leading the charge at Boys’ Champs, and for Jamaica.
Now back at Munro, Bryan is looking to restore that lustre as interim head coach of the track and field team, which returned to competition at the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA)/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championship yesterday.
After a scaled-down event last year and 2020’s cancelled schedule, both owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, Champs returned with a near-capacity school and athlete cast for its April 5-9 showcase at the National Stadium. It is one area that Bryan is targeting to rebuild another area of his alma mater’s rich history.
“It’s a process. We just started face to face and this has given us the ability to now develop the Munro culture in these budding athletes, trying to get them to understand the history, trying to teach them the ways of Munro College, teach them about when Munro used to dominate Champs,” he recounts, noting the long periods students would have been away from school and doing online classes during the pandemic.
As one of the earliest competitors, Munro College were fairly dominant in the first four decades at Boys’ Championships.
The school, which is located in the cool hills of Bigwood District, Potsdam, St Elizabeth, won all their nine titles during that period, the last coming in 1948.
They have gone through a dry spell since and with youngsters providing the strength of their team, the drought is expected to continue this year.
Throughout their long history, the school has produced some outstanding athletes, including the late, legendary Lindy Delapenha, who competed in eight heats and eight finals in the then two-day Champs. That was way back in 1945 when he won the 880-yard and one-mile races, placed second in the 120-yard hurdles, 220-yard dash and long jump; and third in the 110 and 440-yard races.
From those early days, such feats forced organisers to alter rules governing the number of events in which an athlete can participate and over the years it has been modified on countless occasions.
More recently, Munro produced another outstanding talent, Turks and Caicos Islands-born Delano Williams, who copped the boys’ sprint double (100m, 200m) in 2012.
One area in which they have remained consistent, however, is in field events.
FIELD EVENTS
“On the Saturday when all the running is going on we might fall short there. But in terms of field events, traditionally Munro College is up there with any school, any traditional high school currently,” said Bryan, keen to restore Munro’s level in its area of strength.
“So that is something I came through as well as an athlete at Munro and I’m looking to share my experience with them as teaching moments, as well as those who would have competed long before I came to Munro,” he shared.
Bryan represented Munro in under-16 football, under-14 hockey and track and field from second form to sixth, winning multiple gold medals at Western Championships, Champs and for Jamaica.
“In 2006 I tied for Champion Boy with Yohan Blake for Class Two. He won the 100m and the 200m and I won the shot put and the discus,” shared Bryan of their Western Champs tie.
Later that year, he won the discus gold medal and silver in the shot put for Jamaica at the Carifta Games in Guadeloupe, then went on to Trinidad and Tobago at the Central American and Caribbean Games, where he claimed the gold medal with a discus record.
With those successes up his sleeve, Bryan is looking to inspire his Munro cohort, which will be led by Class Three field event athletes Javontae Smith, the Western Champs discus champion, Brian Dobson and Luke Ridgaard.
“So yeah, we’re in the process of doing that (instituting Munro College culture) and I think they are taking to it, they are looking like, you know, ‘I’m a Munro athlete, I’m competing with the confidence that Mr Bryan is instilling in me right now. I’m believing, I’m believing’,” Bryan shared.
“A lot of things have gone into what we have accomplished so far and we are just starting. We are trying to overcome the inertia of restarting something from scratch. But I’m confident that in the next two years we will have some potential world-beaters, if not at least a national representative coming out of the programme.”