School sports season is almost over, and as always, while there is a great deal to celebrate, there is also a lot of room for improvement. Hopefully, you will bear with me as I offer a few recommendations on how we can achieve a much better school track and field product.
First, I think it’s high time we resource all of our schools for success. We need more coaches, better facilities, equipment and implements, including shot put circles, long jump pits, and high jump mats. In the first instance, we should consider placing these in quadrants; ideally, all of the nation’s 24 secondary schools should have them.
We also need to diversify our athletes beyond flat sprints. We always talk about relay teams, but a relay team from a small country will almost never have just four flat sprinters – it will include quarter-milers, jumpers and hurdlers. An investment in sprint hurdling could be massively advantageous to our young athletes.
On a broader scale, the government and schools themselves must work collaboratively with the national federation, not just to provide technical support but also to schedule school meets that complement club meets. This year, for instance, the best 400m runners had Island Champs heats and relays, followed by National Juniors five days later, Island Champs semifinals three days later, and finals another four days later. And that’s in the rare instance of an athlete doing just one event.
On that note, it is probably past time that we nationalise certain athletes. If we know a child has talent, they should be a national project, as was the case with Julien Alfred, who received support and guidance from the Athletics Association, the Ministry of Sports and the Olympic Committee. The decision to compete in a given number of school sports events should not rest with the athlete or a teacher.
We are also long overdue for a sports scholarship desk, with clear objectives and funding. We have scores of talented kids who don’t even know what they are capable of, and what opportunities exist for them to use their abilities to further themselves. A sports policy, which again is long overdue, should include clear direction in that regard.
There is tremendous scope for improvement in the delivery of school athletics, particularly in planning and consolidation. Here are some of my ideas towards that end, which may not be as obvious or as sexy, but which strike at the heart of quality delivery.
Record keeping is essential
I know not everyone enjoys reading a lot of stats. My copy editor certainly does not! But in sports, the facts and figures are crucial. The beautiful thing about track and field, in particular (swimming, too) is that performances are measurable and generally speaking, translate to different environments. Once you have properly trained people in timing events, you can easily compare 100m times from Vieux Fort, Soufriere, and everyone’s new favourite, Timbuktu.
That’s literally impossible when PE teachers and coaches don’t supply complete results in a timely manner. But I am not here to just criticise or point fingers. I have suggestions.
At present, secondary schools have access to the same platform, athletic.net, that clubs in Saint Lucia, several other Caribbean territories, and the US use. But they only use it to register for Island Champs.
The software is dead easy to manage, and I would recommend that every school in Saint Lucia be mandated to create a free account and run their school meets using the “live” function, which allows results to be entered as soon as an event is completed. That would not necessarily eliminate the pencil-and-paper method as the primary source of statistics, but it would greatly reduce reliance on it and create a proper archive for budding athletes.
Here, I must thank the sports committee of District 2. By the time a meeting is done, they generally have results ready in a shareable, editable format. A handful of secondary schools also do a good job in that regard, but most have a long way to go.
You can find results from school track meets in Trinidad & Tobago, Barbados, and Jamaica online. Why not Saint Lucia? For that matter, Island Champs results are not archived, and even Athletics Association meets are not always updated, which is a problem in and of itself. But we should be able to look up results from any school in Saint Lucia and compare them to any school in Europe or North America.
Pay for play
Still on Island Champs, in an environment where schools are unevenly resourced, I think we need to do away with cash incentives. Prizes are a distraction. At this level, and at this stage of our history, we need to focus on developing ALL our schools. It’s also crazy to give the biggest institutions even more money for their sports programmes.
The debate has raged on, as it does every year, about big schools versus small ones, girls’ and boys’ schools versus co-ed schools. The truth is that school competition will remain uneven for the foreseeable future. Some schools have an ingrained sports culture, often backed by a large student body and wealthier parents.
Alumni associations and community businesses can, however, help schools punch above their weight, especially the less well-to-do institutions with smaller populations and less access to coaching. Those schools must also seek to enter a wider range of events, especially field events, if they hope to compete.
We have glaring gaps in our school sports structures. The solutions will not be found overnight, but the key point is that the Government (the Ministry of Education, Youth Development and Sports in particular), schools, and the national governing body must develop a better understanding of their roles in sports development and in promoting international competitiveness.
To deliver a world-class sports product, we must adopt modern thinking and be prepared to do the hard work over the long haul. There are no quick fixes, and there is no free lunch.
(TF)
