Surprise, surprise, surprise

NOW IN its second week, I can admit that the first Saturday of the local track season knocked me off my chair. Leading the shocks was first-year Class Two sprinter Thieanna-Lee Terrelonge of Edwin Allen High who blew everybody’s mind. Terrelonge blasted the 100 metres in 11.30 seconds!

It’s no surprise that she won. After all, she has been winning at the ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Athletics Championships (Champs) since Class Four but 11.30 is a different ballgame. My mind ran to the Class Two records, established by Kevona Davis at 11.16 and 22.72 seconds in 2018 with Kerrica Hill equalling the 100m mark in 2022. If Terrelonge keeps this up, they must be in grave danger.

Then worry chipped in. The mind-blower came on January 6, more than two months before Champs and way ahead of the August 27-31 World Under-20 Championships in Lima, Peru. I saw her coach Michael Dyke at Jamaica College (JC) and calmed down a bit because he is a past master at peaking his junior sprinters right on time.

In my head, it’s still 60 per cent calm and 40 per cent worry.

A pleasant surprise came from the west as the County of Cornwall Athletics Association successfully revived its First Chance meet and returned the sport to Cornwall College. With the restoration of track and field facilities at the Montego Bay Sports Complex apparently off the front burner, it’s great that western Jamaica has taken matters into its own hands.

The third surprise wasn’t so cheerful. I learnt at JC that the Corporate Area Development Meet will be held there February 16-17, with the SW Issac Henry Memorial, a tribute by the St Andrew Technical High (STATHS) family to the legendary educator, inside the National Stadium on February 17.

Easter is early and the 2024 season is short, causing these two meets to clash.

That hurts on two levels. Presumably, the STATHS team will miss the Corporate Area Championships and a chance to run and jump against Kingston and St Andrew’s best.

That’s an internal matter. More importantly, JC’s wonderful Ashenheim Stadium isn’t designed to host the 2000-metre steeplechase which has been a part of the Corporate Area Championships for some time. If things stay the same, our young Corporate Area steeplechasers will miss one of the few opportunities to learn their event.

That decision was a surprise but there is a solution. With the Jamaica Athletics Administrative Association perhaps as the broker, the SW ‘Isaac’ Henry organisers should offer to stage the Corporate Area Championships steeplechase events so that the youngsters won’t lose. The schedule clash is no one’s fault but the only way to survive is to find solutions that suit everyone.

Hubert Lawrence has made notes at trackside since 1980.